





,-•-: 






z*» 



THE STORY OF KOREA 




THE TWO LAST SOVEREIGNS. 



Frontispiece. 



THE 

STORY OF KOREA 



BY 

JOSEPH H. LONGFORD 

M 

LATE H.M. CONSUL AT NAGASAKI; 
PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE, KING'S 
COLLEGE, LONDON ; BARRISTER- 
AT-LAW, MIDDLE TEMPLE 

AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF OLD JAPAN" 



WITH 33 ILLUSTRATIONS 
AND THREE MAPS 



NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

LONDON: T FISHER UNWIN 

1911 



■'- c 



DS«=!o7 

.Ls 



(All rights reserved. 



PREFACE 

The welcome so heartily accorded both by critics 
and the public to the " Story of Old Japan " has 
tempted the writer to endeavour to tell, in the same 
easy and popular way, the Story of Korea, a story 
scarcely less replete than that of Japan with 
picturesque and romantic incidents of war, politics, 
and social life. During the last thirty years Korea 
has been the pivot of all the politics of the Far 
East. It has been the subject of two great wars, 
as the result of which it has ceased to exist as an 
independent kingdom . Few people in England know 
it otherwise than as a geographical expression. 
Fewer still realise the great addition which its incor- 
poration in the dominions of the Emperor of Japan 
will make to the military and commercial resources 
of his Empire. Its magnificent harbours will pro- 
vide new bases, and its coast population, which 
produced brave and skilful sailors in the Middle 
Ages, will afford abundant recruits for his fleet. Its 
peasants will furnish a large contingent to his armies, 
which scientific training, discipline, and good treat- 
ment, the writer, judging from his own experience 
in Japan, believes, will convert, ere another generation 
has passed away, into soldiers not less fearless or 



vi PREFACE 

efficient than are now the Japanese themselves. Its 
abundant natural resources, favoured by a good 
climate, by rainfall and sunshine that are both 
abundant, and by entire exemption from the disasters 
of floods and earthquakes that are the terrors of 
Japan, only require intelligent, honest, and scientific 
development to convert their potentialities into 
realities of industrial and commercial wealth. All 
this will be given by Japanese administrators, who 
will bring to Korea the methods which they have 
already so successfully exploited in their own country 
as to raise it, within half a century, from impotence 
and indigence, into the position of one of the great 
military and commercial powers of the world. Korea, 
both in its own history and as a factor in the future 
status of our ally and in the political balance of the 
Far East, may, the writer hopes, prove of sufficient 
interest to English readers to induce them to extend 
to a volume in which its story is told simply, as it 
has never been told before, without fear or favour, 
without either exaggeration or concealment, no less 
cordial a welcome than they generously gave to his 
work on Japan. 

The Appendix contains a bibliography of the long 
list of works which have been consulted in the 
preparation of this volume. Part of the material is 
founded on or has been taken from Dallet's " Histoire 
de l'Eglise de Coree," the contributions to the 
" Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan " of 
Dr. Aston and Mr. E. H. Parker, the latter, like Dr. 
Aston, a profound Oriental scholar, and Mr. Homer 
Hulbert's scholarly and complete " History of 



PREFACE vii 

Korea/' published at Seoul in 1904, in two large 
and closely printed volumes, a work full of interest, 
but one which demands attentive study on the part 
of its readers. Acknowledgment is made in the 
text in all places in which the writer has used or 
quoted from these works. He is also indebted to the 
Rev. John Ross's very learned "History of Korea" 
for some of the material for his story of the relations 
between Korea and China under the Imperial 
dynasties of the Tsin, Mongols, and early Manchus. 
His "Story of Modern Korea," since 1870, is 
founded almost entirely on his own personal know- 
ledge of the events which are related, acquired during 
his official career in Japan. 

His best thanks are due to his Excellency the 
Japanese Ambassador, and to Mr. Sakata, Consul - 
General in London, for some of the photographs 
with which the volume is illustrated ; and to Mr. 
Sakata, Mr. Kishi, Secretary of Embassy, and to Mr. 
Y. Komma, Secretary of the Consulate-General, for 
their assistance in elucidating obscure points in 
ancient history. 

J. H. L. 

King's College, 
June 25, 191 1. 






CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE . . -9 

II. THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA . . 32 

III. THE DARK AGES . . . . . 50 

IV. THE STORY OF THE THREE KINGDOMS . . ■ 65 
V. EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN . . .89 

VI. UNITED KOREA . IO4 

VII. CHOSEN — FIRST PERIOD . . . . 123 

VIII. HIDEYOSHl'S INVASION — THE FIRST STAGE . 139 

IX. HIDEYOSHl'S INVASION — THE SECOND STAGE . 167 

X, CHOSEN — SECOND PERIOD * I96 



1* 



1 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

XI. EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS . . . 2l6 



XII. CHRISTIANITY TO THE FIRST PERSECUTION . 242 

XIII. CHRISTIANITY — PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION . 273 

XIV. MODERN KOREA — 1 868-84 • • • 2 9^ 
XV. MODERN KOREA — 1884-I905 . . . 32O 

XVI. THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE I905-IO , -351 

XVII. TRADE AND INDUSTRY .... 366 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 385 

INDEX . . . . . . 389 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



THE TWO LAST SOVEREIGNS 



VIEWS IN PHYONG AN 



Frontispiece 



FACING PAGE 

. 18' 



SEOUL. OUTSIDE THE CITY WALL 



. 22 



THE ARCH OF INDEPENDENCE 



. 26 



YANGBAN. AN ARCHERY MEETING 



YANGBANS AT HOME — A GAME OF CHESS 



A YANGBAN'S SEDAN CHAIR 



A YANGBAN'S RESIDENCE — ENTRANCE 



VILLAGE NEAR PHYONG AN 



TOMB OF A SILLAN KING AT KYUN JU 



• 34 

• 38 
. 42 
. 48 

. 86 



VIEW OF SEOUL, LOOKING TOWARDS THE SOUTHERN 

MOUNTAIN . . . . • -126 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



LETTER IN ON-MUN — FACSIMILE 



FACING PAGE 
. 132 



BUDDHIST MONASTERY AND MONKS 



134 



SEOUL — PALACE GATEWAY . 



PHYONG AN — THE RIVER TATONG 



BUDDHIST TEMPLES AT KYUN JU 



PASS ON THE PEKING ROAD 



TOMB NEAR SEOUL . 



AUDIENCE- HALL IN THE PALACE 



SEOUL— TEMPLE OF HEAVEN 



STREET IN OLD SEOUL 



A COURT OF JUSTICE 



A VILLAGE SCHOOL 



MARBLE PAGODA IN SEOUL 



ROAD OUTSIDE SEOUL 



SEOUL — THE SOUTH GATE OF THE CITY 



. 158 

. 162 
. 188 
. 206 
. 212 
. 222 

• 250 
. 264 
. 282 
. 292 
. 298 
. 306 

• 314 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



KIM OK KIUN 



VIEW OF MODERN SEOUL . 



OLD PALACE — THE ROYAL DWELLING 



MAIN STREET IN MODERN SEOUL 



THE GENERAL HOSPITAL IN SEOUL 



SPADE WORK 



WINNOWING 



FACING PAGE 



. 328 

• 334 

• 34° 

• 352 

• 356 

• 368 

• 372 



.-■■ 



MAPS 



THE THREE HAN 



THE THREE KINGDOMS 



KOREA 



. 6l 
. 67 

at end of volume 



NOTE 

The Chinese ideographs on the cover are those which, in Japanese, are 
read as " Keirin Hachido Monogatari," or the "Story of the Eight Circuits 
of Keirin " (Korea). An explanation of the term Keirin is given on page 345. 
The design on the front of the cover represents the National flag of 
Korea, which, totally unlike as it was to that of Japan, was founded on the 
same order of ideas* ' The figure in its centre represents the Yang and Yin, 
in Chinese philosophy the male and female principles of Nature — the perfect 
and the imperfect — from which the universe takes its origin. The groups 
of whole and broken lines in the four corners are four of the eight Kwa 
or trigrams, devised by Fu-hsi, Emperor of China, who lived thirty-three 
centuries before Christ. He got the idea from the marks on the back of a 
11 dragon horse " which came out of the Yellow River. The trigrams 
exhibit the operations of Nature, and classify the qualities of all things in 
heaven and earth, and were used throughout the later ages in divination. 
They were interpreted in the Yih King — the Book of Changes — the most 
ancient surviving book of China, compiled, from the rudiments bequeathed 
by Fu-hsi, towards the close of the Yen dynasty in 1122 B.C., the 
period at which Ki Tse founded Chosen. The four on the cover 
are (1) == (three whole lines) Yang, the male principle, 

Heaven or the Sky ; (2) s^EE " (three broken lines) Yin, the 

female principle, the Earth ; (3) — — (two whole lines with 

a broken one between them) Fire, the Sun, emblematic of the ;Yang ; 
(4) " (two broken lines with a whole one between them) 

Water, as in Rain, Clouds, Springs, or Streams, emblematic of the Yin. 
The four also represent the points of the compass in the order in which 
they have been given — South, North, East, West. A full translation of 
the Yih King by Dr. Legge is included in the " Sacred Books of the East/' 
vol. xvi., edited by Professor Max M tiller, and the similarity of the origin 
of the Japanese and Korean flags was first pointed out by Dr. Aston in his 
essay on "The National Flag of Japan," "Transactions of the Asiatic 
Society of Japan," vol. xxii. 



THE STORY OF KOREA 

CHAPTER I 

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 

The kingdom of Korea, which possessed an authentic 
history extending over three thousand years and 
traditional legends dating from a period more than 
a thousand years prior to the dawn of its history, 
lay in the peninsula which extends southwards into 
the Sea of Japan from the north-eastern boundaries 
of the Chinese Empire and is fringed on its southern 
and western sides by numerous islands. Its existence 
first became known in Europe through the Arab 
geographer Khordadbeh, who, in the ninth century 
of our era, described it in his book of roads and 
provinces, quoted in Baron Richtofen's great work 
on China, as "an unknown land beyond the frontiers 
of Kantu " — the modern Shantung — " rich in gold, 
and exporting ginseng, camphor, aloes, and deerhorn, 
and such manufactured products as nails, saddles, 
porcelain, and satin." M Mussulmans," he said, 
" who visited it were often so attracted by it that 
they were induced to settle there." It was visited in 
the sixteenth century by one of the Jesuit priests 
from the mission in Japan, who was permitted to act 
as chaplain to the Christian soldiers who formed a 
large contingent of Hideyoshi's invading armies in 



10 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the closing decade of the century ; but the earliest 
European description of it which now survives was 
furnished by Hendrik Hamel, a Dutch seaman, who 
was shipwrecked in the year 1653 on the Island of 
jQuelpart, when on a voyage from Texel to- Japan, in 
the service of the Dutch East India Company. A 
translation of his graphic description of the country 
and people and of his own romantic experiences and 
sufferings is contained in the seventh volume of 
Pinkerton's " Voyages. " Hamel and thirty-five of 
his shipmates, out of a total complement of sixty-four, 
were saved from the wreck, and they remained in the 
country for over thirteen years, when Hamel and 
seven other survivors succeeded in making their 
escape to Japan, from which in due course they 
returned to their native land. 

Late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth 
centuries the Korean coasts were visited by British, 
French, and Russian vessels of war when on voyages 
of exploration in the Pacific, and the commanders 
have left memorials of their discoveries in the 
geographical names that still distinguish the islands 
and bays in our charts and maps. None of the 
explorers ever ventured to leave the coasts. None 
ever slept outside their own ships. In all the long 
interval that passed between Ha-mel's escape and 
Captain Broughton's memorable voyage in 1797 
Korea was left unregarded in its national isolation 
by Europeans, whether sailors, travellers, traders, or 
missionaries ; and it was not until the nineteenth 
century was well advanced into the years of its middle 
age that missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, 
who never knew fear when in the service of their 
Master, stole through the barriers within which the 
Koreans secluded themselves from all the world, and 
were able to penetrate into the interior and to 
describe, with the skill and accuracy of scholars and 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 11 

scientists, the history, manners, and customs of a 
country and people of whom our only previous direct 
knowledge was founded on the writings of an humble 
Dutch sailor and the fragmentary notice of an ancient 
Arab geographer. 

The peninsula extends from 43 02' to 33 12' 
north latitude and from 124 18' to 130 54' east 
longitude. Its extreme width in its widest part, from 
the mouth of the Yalu to that of the Tumen, is over 
350 miles, but this narrows in the latitude of the 
capital to 120 miles. Its length is about 500 miles, 
and its total coast -line is said to be over 1,700 
miles. Its total area is estimated as 84,000 square 
miles, or, roughly, about that of Great Britain and 
half that of Japan. It is bounded on the north by 
the Russian Asiatic province of Primorsk, with 
which it is coterminous for 1 1 miles from the Pacific 
coast, and by Manchuria, its confines being delimi- 
tated by the River Tumen, flowing into the Pacific 
on the east, by the River Yalu, flowing into the 
Yellow Sea on the west, and between the two by the 
lofty Sh,an Yan Range or Ever White Mountains, in 
which are the sources of both rivers. On the east it 
has the Sea of Japan, and on the west the Yellow 
Sea. On the south it is separated from Kiusiu by the 
Straits of Korea, in which, midway between the 
Korean and Japanese coasts, lies the Japanese island 
of Tsushima, from which Korea is visible on clear 
days. The number of Korean islands exceeds two 
hundred. One small, solitary island, Dagelet Island 
— so named by the French navigator La Perouse, who 
discovered it, in honour of the great French 
astronomer — lies in the Japan Sea, as lonely as St. 
Helena in the Great Ocean, 45 miles off the 
east coast, but with that exception all the islands 
are on the southern or western coasts of the penin- 
sula. The majority of these are inhabited, cultivated 



12 THE STORY OF KOREA 

or well wooded, but some are bare volcanic rocks, 
rising with picturesque precipitousness out of the 
sea £o a height of from i,ooo to 2,000 feet. The 
largest and most important among them is Quelpart 
— more correctly Quelpaert — the scene of Hamel's 
shipwreck, and in more recent days of that of H.M.S. 
Bedford, a well -cultivated island, 40 miles in length 
by 17 in breadth, with a resident population of 
100,000 souls, lying about 60 miles from the south- 
west corner of the mainland. Thirty-six miles to 
the east of Quelpart is the Nan Hau Group of three 
islands, ,which were occupied by Great Britain in 
the years 1884-6, "when Russian aggression menaced 
the integrity of Korea, and Japan had not yet won. 
her spurs as a great military Power. The pic- 
turesqueness of the seascapes throughout the whole 
length of the western coast is increased by number- 
less islets or rocks that rise boldly out of the deep 
waters of the sea, whose cliffs and fir-clad peaks are 
the joy of lovers of the grand in Nature, but whose 
presence is a source of anxiety to the navigator when, 
as is often the case, they are shrouded in the dense 
summer fogs of the Yellow Sea. So thickly do 
islands and islets cluster together along the entire 
western shore of the peninsula that it is only at rare 
intervals the mainland can be seen at all from the 
deck of the passing sea-going steamer. 

On the east, the long coast, from the Russian 
frontier to the south-east corner, where the harbour 
of Fusan fronts Tsushima and Kiusiu, is, with the 
one exception already mentioned, destitute of islands, 
and its line is broken only by what is called 
Brought on Bay, after the great British navigator, 
with its two harbours of Gensan and Port Lazareff. 
On the south coast are the capacious, deep, and well- 
sheltered harbours of Fusan and Masampo, each 
capable of affording safe anchorage for a fleet of the 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 13 

largest warships of the present day, the possession of 
which is therefore a most valuable asset to a Power 
that aspires to the naval hegemony of the Pacific. 
On the west coast there are many harbours, and also 
anchorages amid and under the shelter of the islands, 
but both their naval and commercial importance is 
discounted by the tides, which rise and fall, with 
great rapidity and violence, from 25 to 30 feet. On 
the east and south coasts the rise and fall are only 
a few feet. Quelpart has no harbour, but the 
Nan Hau Group enclose a deep and well-sheltered 
harbour, which could hold all the fleets on the Pacific, 
though they would have a poor time if seeking refuge 
from the guns of a blockading enemy. Both east and 
west coasts are bold and hilly, the east mountainous, 
only a narrow strip of cultivated plains separating 
the shore from the chain of lofty mountains which, 
after starting from the sacred Paik-Tu peak of the 
Ever White Range in the extreme north and passing 
through the centre of the north-eastern province of 
Ham Gyong, reaches the east coast about the fortieth 
parallel of latitude and then extends in a continuous 
line to the extreme south, here and there on its way 
throwing out spurs that wind towards the western 
coast. Among these spurs, nearly midway between 
the extreme north and south, are the Diamond Moun- 
tains, so called by the Koreans themselves, from the 
resemblance of their " twelve thousand serrated 
peaks " to rough diamonds, the site of the great 
historic Buddhist monasteries of Korea, and famous, 
not only in Korea but in China and Japan!, for the 
sublime grandeur of their scenery. 

All Korea is mountainous, not so much so as is 
Japan, but still so broken that there is only one — 
perhaps two may be admitted — extensive plain, and 
the whole surface of the country was compared by 
the French missionaries to the sea in a heavy gale. 



14 THE STORY OF KOREA 

The mountains in the north are thickly wooded and 
their deep valleys and gorges afford scenes of impres- 
sive beauty ; but those along the coast are mostly 
bare^ their surface covered with coarse bamboo -grass, 
the monotony of which is only varied by scattered 
groves of stunted firs that rarely attain to a height 
of more than four to five feet. The " land of treeless 
mountains " is a common epithet for Korea among 
Japanese. At a distance the coasts are not unlike 
the Sussex Downs, though they rise to a greater 
height from the sea -level, but it is only distance that 
gives them this enchantment, the coarse grass which 
covers them being woefully different to the soft turf 
of the Downs. 

Every mountain gorge and valley is watered by 
its own stream, that rushes over a shallow, pebbly 
bed ; but, as could not be otherwise in so narrow 
a country, large rivers are few, and both their swift- 
ness and shallowness render them unsuitable for pur- 
poses of transport. The Yalu (called by the Koreans, 
from the yividness of its colour after the melting 
of the snow and ice, the Am Nok or Green Duck) 
and the Tumen in the north have been already men- 
tioned. Others, flowing into the Yellow Sea, are the 
Tatong, which flows through a great part of the 
north-western province of Phyong An, and, passing 
the old historical capital of the province, enters the 
sea at Chinampo about the thirty-ninth parallel, and 
the Han, which, rising in the eastern province of Kang- 
iWon and entering the sea at Chemulpo on the western 
coast, divides the entire peninsula into two almost 
equal portions. On it lies the capital Seoul. All 
these rivers receive many tributaries, and all are 
navigable for small craft for some distance from 
their mouths. The Naktong, which finds its way 
to the sea at Fusan in the south-eastern corner of the 
peninsula, after an almost direct southern course, is 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 15 

the only river of importance in the east, the proximity 
of the mountains to the coast preventing those which 
take their rise on the eastern slopes attaining any 
higher dignity than that of streams. There are no 
lakes in Korea sufficiently large to be marked on 
the map. 

The domestic animals include horses, asses, mules, 
oxen, dogs, sheep, goats, and pigs. The horses are 
small, and long-continued cruelty has rendered them 
vicious in the extreme, but they possess great 
strength. The want of roads prevents their use in 
carriages or carts, and as the modern Koreans are 
not a nation of horsemen and prefer the more humble 
donkey for purposes of travelling, the principal 
service of the horse is that of pack -carrying. For 
agricultural purposes only the ox is used. Cattle are 
abundant, especially in the south, and of excellent 
quality, bearing a marked resemblance to the English 
shorthorns, and are as remarkable for their tract - 
ability as the horses are the reverse. The Koreans 
are largely a meat -eating people, not disdaining even 
the flesh of dogs, and ox -hides are an important 
article of export, furnishing the main supply for the 
requirements of the modern tanneries of Japan. 

Of the wild animals, the most noted is the tiger, 
which exists in great numbers in the mountains and 
forests of the north-eastern provinces, but is found 
all over the country, tigers having, it is said, been 
known to enter into the very streets of the capital. 1 
It is equally characterised by its size, boldness, and 
ferocity, qualities which have given it a prominent 
place in the folklore, proverbs, and customs of the 
people, and have also, it may be added, filled them 

1 In the early days of the Janese settlement at Gensan, a policeman 
left his box one cold winter's night to make his round in the settle- 
ment. On his return he found a large tiger, which had entered the 
box in his absence, asleep by the stove. 



16 THE STORY OF KOREA 

with a very well grounded dread. Its figure was 
a favourite device to be emblazoned on war banners. 
The tiger-hunters, who form a class by themselves, 
were always called upon to lead forlorn hopes when 
on military service, as those whose courage, strength, 
and activity had been developed in the best of schools. 
The skins, which are beautifully marked and, as is 
natural from the fact that its principal home is among 
mountains that are deeply clad in snow for nearly half 
the year, have a much thicker fur than the Indian 
variety, were highly prized for decorative purposes, 
not only as rugs but as military ornaments by the 
Japanese, among whom, ever since the days of 
Hideyoshi, the tiger-skin-covered scabbard was one 
of the most cherished outer marks of an officer of 
rank, while the claws were worn as jewels. The 
flesh was eaten and the bones were converted into 
a medicine which was highly prized in the Chinese 
pharmacopoeia as a courage-producing specific of in- 
fallible merit. Tigers were usually hunted in winter, 
when they floundered helplessly in the deep snow, 
the frozen surface of which was strong enough to 
bear the weight of nimble hunters on snowshoes and 
their dogs, but even under these circumstances, the 
courage of the hunters may be estimated from the 
fact that they seldom hesitated to attack the tiger 
single-handed and armed only with an old flint-lock 
gun. In summer, on the other hand, when the dense 
undergrowth of the forests placed the hunter at its 
mercy, the advantage was on the side of the tiger, a 
fact which gave rise to the Chinese saying that the 
tiger is hunted by the Koreans during one half of 
the year and the Koreans by the tiger during the 
other half. Notwithstanding the terror caused by 
his known presence in their neighbourhood, villagers 
are so reckless as to sleep in midsumtner with wide- 
open doors or even beneath sheds or in the open 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 17 

fields, where they fall an easy prey. The annual 
death roll is therefore very large. The other wild 
animals include leopards, bears, deer, boars, and a 
variety of fur -bearing animals, including otters, 
martins, squirrels, and sables. Among the birds are 
eagles, hawks, pheasants, ducks, swans, geese, herons, 
cranes, snipe, rooks, storks, and many others in 
numbers large enough to render Korea, with its addi- 
tional opportunities for the hunting of large game, 
a paradise for sportsmen, were it not for the physical 
discomforts of travelling and lodging in the mountain 
districts. 

The seas, especially on the east and south coasts, 
abound in fish, though the variety is much less than 
on the coast of Japan. They have long been a 
successful fishing-ground for whales, which follow 
the shoals of herrings and sardines that are found in 
immense numbers. Only the most primitive methods 
of fishing are followed by the Koreans, and it is 
principally Japanese fishermen who reap the rich 
harvest of their seas on the east and Chinese on the 
west. Even in the days of national isolation, no pro- 
hibition was imposed on either Chinese or Japanese 
against fishing in Korean waters, the only limitation 
being that they should neither land on Korean soil 
nor communicate with the natives while on the sea. 
The last was easily evaded, either in the obscurity of 
the frequent fogs or under the shadows of the many 
islands whose lofty cliffs towered out of the sea, and 
extensive smuggling was successfully carried on by 
Chinese and Japanese, especially by the former, who, 
to this day, may be counted among the most astute 
smugglers in the world. 

When King Taijo founded his dynasty in 1392, one 
of his first measures was to divide the peninsula 
for administrative purposes into eight circuits or 
provinces. Under the Japanese protectorate, the five 

2 



18 THE STORY OF KOREA 

which were of larger area were each separated into 
two independent local governments retaining their 
old titles with the addition of North or South, but 
with this exception the provinces have remained until 
this day exactly as they were constituted by Taijo, 
more than six hundred years ago. Their delimitation 
testifies to his skill as a statesman with a keen eye 
to the economic welfare of his kingdom. Each pro- 
vince has an extensive coast -line, and there is only 
one in which there is not at least one fine harbour. 
Korea's foreign intercourse in his day was entirely 
with China, and five of the provinces were therefore 
constituted out of the west half of the kingdom which 
faced China, three being considered sufficient for the 
east half, which, though of much greater area than 
the west, was broken everywhere by mountains and 
its long coast-line faced the stormy Sea of Japan 
without shelter from outlying islands. 

The names of the five provinces on the west coast, 
taking them in order from north to south are : 
Phyong An (Tranquil Peace), Hoang-hai (Yellow 
Sea), Kyong-Kwi (Capital Boundaries), Chhung 
Chyong (Pure Loyalty), and Cholla (Complete 
Network) ; and those of the provinces on the east : 
Ham Gyong (All Mirror), Kang Won (River Moor), 
and Kyong-syang (Joyful Honour). 

Phyong An, on the north-west, is the frontier pro- 
vince, separated from Manchuria by the River Yalu 
and bounded on its south by the River Tatong, two 
of the largest rivers in Korea. It has been through- 
out its history the great battlefield of Korea. In 
ancient days when it was part of the territory of 
Korai it was the scene of the invasions of the Swi 
and Tang Emperors of China. In the Middle Ages 
it was again desolated by the Mongol and Manchu 
armies and the march of Hideyoshi's soldiers ex- 
tended as far as its capital, Phyong An. In our own 




< 

O 



1 






THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 19 

days it was the scene of the first great battle in 
the China-Japan War of 1894, and ten years later 
of the march of the Japanese on their way to drive 
the Russians from the Yalu. Time and time again 
it has been ravaged from end to end, its towns and 
villages sacked and burnt. In 1894 it suffered 
equally from flying Chinese and pursuing Japanese, 
but its fertility and the industry of its inhabitants, who 
have inherited some of the vigour of their ancestors 
of old Korai, and have sunk less deeply than the 
inhabitants of the other provinces under the blight- 
ing influence of mis -government, have enabled it each 
time to recover, and it is now one of the least poor 
of all the provinces. Two of its towns will be fre- 
quently referred to in subsequent pages. Aichiu (now 
called Wiju) was the old frontier town, near the 
mouth of the River Yalu, where a strict watch was 
kept for foreign trespassers and smugglers. It now 
promises to become an important seat of trade, the 
depot of the great timber industry, the material for 
which is furnished by the virgin forests of the Shan 
Yan Mountains. The exploiting of these forests by 
the Russians and their high-handedness in establish- 
ing a depot, which was really a military outpost, at 
Wiju, may be said to have been the spark that kindled 
the flames of the Russian War with Japan. 

Phyong An, the capital of the province, on the 
River Tatong, about fifty miles from its mouth, was 
the seat which Ki Tse, the founder of Korea, chose 
for his government in 11 22 B.C. His tomb is still to 
be seen, a holy spot in the eyes of all Koreans, 
and there are still traces of the walls of the city 
which he founded. It was afterwards the capital of 
Korai, and when Korai fell, it was the centre from 
which the Chinese prefects directed the administration 
of the conquered provinces. It was taken and held in 
1592 by Hideyoshi's general, Konishi Yukinaga, and 



20 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in 1894 it was almost destroyed in the battle of 
September 15th between the Chinese and Japanese. 
It is, however, still the third city in Korea in point 
of population ; it is one of the most picturesque in 
its situation on a high bluff on the north bank of 
the river ; and as it is in the centre of a fertile district 
that not only produces in abundance the ordinary 
agricultural staples, including silk and the invalu- 
able ginseng, but has great prospective treasures of 
mineral wealth of gold and coal ; as it is also on the 
great trunk railway that runs from Fusan to Seoul 
and from Seoul to Wiju ; and as it possesses in the 
Tatong, which is navigable for cargo -carrying boats 
of light draught to within a few miles of it, a cheap 
highway to its seaport Chinampo, it may develop into 
a prosperous commercial city. It is a great station 
of Nonconformist missionary enterprise at the present 
day. The city in its configuration resembles a 
Korean boat. A superstition that if a well was dug 
within its .walls the boat would sink formerly com- 
pelled the inhabitants to obtain their domestic water 
supply from the river, from which it was carried in 
buckets, but under the Japanese administration the 
city is now supplied with water-works, constructed 
on the most modern principles of engineering science. 

Hoang Hai lies south of Phyong An and directly 
facing Shang Tung on the coast of China. It has 
no features that call for special remark, its industries 
being entirely fishing and agricultural. It is one of 
the three provinces that has not been subdivided by 
the Japanese. 

Kyong Kwi is, in its area, the smallest, but in 
its wealth the greatest of all the provinces. In it 
are Seoul, the modern capital, and Sunto (now 
called Kai Seng), the ancient capital in the first 
four centuries (919-1392) of Korea's existence as 
a united kingdom, and now, in population, the second 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 21 

city in the peninsula. Through its centre runs the 
River Han, the largest river whose banks on both 
sides are in Korean territory. On the coast, thirty 
miles from the capital, on the south estuary of the 
Han, is the open port of Chemulpo, the chief seat 
of foreign trade at the present day, the Yokohama 
of Korea, both in its present position and its history. 
Like Yokohama, it owes its rise entirely to foreign 
trade. It was the first new port to be opened 
under the Treaty of 1876 with Japan, and at the time 
of its opening it consisted only of a few miserable 
huts of fishermen. There are now Japanese, Chinese, 
and European settlements within its limits, as well 
as a large Korean town, and the annual value of 
the trade carried on at it reaches two and a half 
millions sterling. 

The first shot in the Japan -Russian War was fired 
just outside its harbour, on February 8, 1904. Two 
Russian men-of-war, the Variag, a swift cruiser of 
the most modern type, and the Korietz, a gunboat, 
were lying in the harbour, before the actual declara- 
tion of war, when a Japanese fleet of seven cruisers 
appeared off its entrance. The gunboat steamed 
out of the harbour, on her way to Port Arthur, but 
found her exit stopped by the torpedo-boats that 
were attached to the Japanese fleet. She fired one 
gun at them. It was said that the discharge was 
accidental, but whether accidental or not, it was the 
first shot that was fired on either side in the war. 
Then she returned to her consort in the harbour. 
The Japanese admiral sent a notice to the Russians 
that if they did not leave the harbour they would be 
attacked within it, and on the following day the two 
ships steamed out to meet the whole Japanese fleet, 
and within a very few hours crept back again to 
the port, battered and crippled wrecks. For three 
hours the Variag had borne the concentrated fire of 



22 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the Japanese ships all round her, firing vigorously in 
return, but the heroic gallantry of the Russians was 
not supported by efficient gunnery. They did not 
succeed in even once hitting any one of the seven 
great targets around them. This fact has, to the 
best of the present writer's knowledge, not hitherto 
been told in any English history of the war, and it 
is his excuse for introducing the incident into pages 
in which it would otherwise have had no place. 

The Capital is connected with Chemulpo by the 
first railway (2 6| miles in length) that was con- 
structed in Korea. The journey occupies one and a 
half hours, there being ten stations on the way. 
It is a walled city lying in an amphitheatre of pic- 
turesque hills, about two miles from the banks of 
the wide and rapidly flowing Han, which encompasses 
all its southern outskirts. Seoul, with its Govern- 
ment offices, banks, hospitals, railway-stations, tram- 
ways, and glass -fronted shops, is, under Japanese 
administration, rapidly following the example of 
Tokio, and changing in its outward appearance from 
an Asiatic to a European city. In its own native 
form, its principal features were its walls that pro- 
tected it, not only on the level, but in their winding 
course climbed all the steep hills around it, crossing 
the North and the " Three peaked " mountains, at 
an altitude of not less than a thousand feet ; the eight 
imposing gates, including among them 1 the gates of 
" Benevolence," " Justice," and " Courtesy," set in 
granite frames, which gave access through the walls ; 
the royal palaces, and the long and wide high street 
which crossed the whole city from east to west, and 
with its living stream of white-clothed passers is one 
of the most picturesque thoroughfares in the world ; 
the great bronze bell, ten feet in height by eight in 
width, the third largest bell in the world, cast in 
1396, and hung in its present site in 1468, the 







SEOUL — OUTSIDE THE CITY WALL. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 23. 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 23 

metal of which failed to fuse until a living child 
had been cast into its molten mass, 1 which for five 
centuries tolled the curfew over the whole city, the 
signal for the closing of the gates and the withdrawal 
of all men to their houses ; near it the eight-storied 
marble pagoda, erected more than seven hundred 
years ago, and beautiful both in its grace and its 
carvings, and the column erected by the Tai Won 
Kun in 1866, when in the flush of his triumph after 
the repulse of the French, with the inscription that 
" whosoever pronounces even the name of Europeans 
is a traitor to his country. " These were the most 
striking objects in the city, while it still preserved 
its native aspect unimpaired by the brick -and-mortar 
creations of modern civilisation. Beyond the city 
walls in the north was the great arch, the Gate of 
Gratitude, where the Chinese Ambassador was on 
his arrival annually welcomed by the King. The 
arch was destroyed by the Japanese in 1904 and 
the arch of independence soon after erected in its 
place. 

Seoul lay in the midst of a quadrilateral of fortified 
cities, in which strong garrisons were maintained, 
and which were looked upon as military outposts for 
the protection of the capital-Kwanju and Suwon 
in the south, Songdo in the north, and in the west 
Kang Wha, the capital town on the island of the 
same name which covers the estuary of the River 
Han. Kang Wha, both city and island, are in their 
historical associations not inferior to Sunto, not 
even to the capital itself, and the island, with its 
mountains broken by well-cultivated valleys, presents 
many graceful pictures of the beauties of hill, sea, 
and valley. The island was formerly the sanctuary 
of the kings when their capital was threatened or 

x It was said that the wailing of a child could always be detected 
in its notes. 



24 THE STORY OF KOREA 

taken. For twenty-eight years in the thirteenth 
century they found refuge in it from the fierce 
Mongols, and twice again in the seventeenth century 
the Court was removed to it. In our own time it 
was attacked and occupied — in each instance for a 
few days — by the French and Americans, on the 
occasions of their ill-judged attacks on Korea. It 
was on the island that the first treaty with Japan was 
negotiated and signed in 1876, and the barriers 
broken of Korea's long national isolation. 

The town of Kang Wha, which contained many 
national treasures, was, with a vandalism not inferior 
to that of Hideyoshi's soldiers, burnt by the French 
when they found it expedient to retreat to their 
ships before the gathering Koreans. It is now the 
chief seat of the British Episcopal Mission in Korea. 

Chhung Chyong and Cholla have both been 
divided by the Japanese into two prefectures, north 
and south. Both are fertile and populous, and large 
quantities of cattle are reared in Cholla. The names 
which their bays and the islands on their coasts bear 
on English charts are memorials of the visits of 
early English and French navigators : Basil Bay is 
called after the captain of the Lyra, Basil Hall. 
Jerome Bay and the Prince Imperial Archipelago 
recall the ill-fated visit of La Gloire and La Victorease 
in 1846, and Modeste, Amherst, and Ross Islands 
the more fortunate cruises of British ships. Both 
provinces have several good harbours, and the 
numerous islands off their coasts also afford well- 
sheltered anchorages. The natives of both are 
famous among Korean sailors — admirals and the 
majority of officers and men, in the fleet which de- 
feated the Japanese in 1593, were all from the two 
provinces, and both were also the scenes of famous 
sieges and battles on land in the same war. 

Kyong Syang in the south-east is the nearest 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 25 

province to Japan, and historically the most interest- 
ing of all. It is in it that all the invading armies 
of Japan have landed from the time of the Empress 
Jingo onwards. Its towns have borne many sieges, 
and in them early Korean civilisation reached its 
highest development. On its coasts are the deep and 
capacious harbours of Masampo and Fusan ; and its 
plains and valleys, watered by the River Naktong, 
which flows through its whole length, with a genial 
climate that is free from the arctic winters of the 
north and east, are the most fertile and populous 
in Korea. Fusan, its principal town, the gateway 
through which all Japanese passed who entered Korea 
prior to 1876, the seat of the Japanese trading factory 
for six centuries, lies on a bay that is protected 
from the sea by Deer Island, and affords within 
the shelter of this island a safe anchorage that would 
hold all the fleets of the Pacific. It was M opened " 
to the Japanese in 1877 and to other foreign nations 
in the early eighties, and as a seat of foreign trade it 
is now second only to Chemulpo. It is the southern 
terminus of the Trunk Railway. Twice each day 
powerful ferry steamers take passengers across the 
120 miles of sea that separate it from Shimono- 
seki, the nearest port in the main island of Japan, 
and all the passenger and mail traffic, not only to 
Korea but to Manchuria and by the Siberian Rail- 
way to Europe, pass through it. Fifty miles to the 
north is the old town of Kyunju, the capital of the 
ancient kingdom of Silla, once the home of everything 
that was greatest and best, in Korean art and litera- 
ture, but which has never recovered from the ruthless 
spoliation it suffered when Hideyoshi's soldiers sacked 
and burnt it as the final act of their last campaign 
in Korea. 

Kang Won, the third of the provinces, which has 
not been subdivided, is unique among all in that 



26 THE STORY OF KOREA 

its long coast-line of more than 150 miles is 
harbourless, and unsheltered by islands. It is 
celebrated for its mountain and coast scenery, but 
falls behind all others both in trade and industry, 
and has no towns of either commercial or historic 
note. The sea along its coast abounds with fish, 
from whales to sardines, but the harvest is reaped 
almost exclusively by Japanese fishermen, their frail 
boats not permitting the Koreans to venture more 
than a few miles from the shore. 

Ham Gyong is the largest of the provinces. On 
its north it borders Asiatic Russia, from which it is 
separated by the River Tumen, and for the remainder 
of its width it is divided from Manchuria by the 
river and by the range of the Ever White Mountains. 
The whole province is covered with lofty forest-clad 
mountains, which extend to the coast and present 
imposing views from the sea, and are the homes of 
the tiger, the bear, and the leopard. The inhabitants, 
hunters of big game and fishers, are the bravest and 
the strongest of all Koreans, and were always called 
upon to furnish the most trusted recruits to the army 
in the worst national crises. 

Broughton Bay, at its extreme south, is the third 
great harbour of Korea, capacious, ice-free, and well 
sheltered, capable in all its natural conditions of being 
converted by the Japanese into an important naval 
base. Properly speaking, it consists of two harbours, 
Port Lazareff in the north of the bay, and Gensan 
in the south, the natural advantages of both, with 
their broad and deep channels and sheltered anchor- 
ages, being nearly equal. Gensan was opened to 
Japanese trade in 1880 and to English and American 
in 1883. A large Japanese settlement has been 
established there, but neither the realities nor the 
prospects of trade have been such as to attract 
Europeans. Historically speaking, Gensan is a place 




THE ARCH OF INDEPENDENCE. 
(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 26. 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 27 

of much interest to Koreans. It was in its neigh- 
bourhood that Taijo, the founder of the last dynasty 
of kings, was born and passed his youth, and a great 
monastery, founded and endowed by himself, on the 
spot where, while still a youth, he foresaw in a dream 
his future greatness, is the object of devoted pilgrim- 
ages on the part of Koreans of all classes. 

The towns which have been mentioned include all 
that there are in Korea with populations of twenty 
thousand people. 

In a peninsula which extends over so wide an 
expanse of latitude the climate naturally varies. The 
winters in the two southern provinces are bright and 
mild. In the north and on the west coast they are 
also bright and clear, but the cold is intense. In 
both north and south there are clear, unclouded skies, 
and the dryness of the atmosphere renders even the 
most severe cold bearable. The River Han is 
usually frozen for two or even three months, the Yalu 
for a longer period, and the ice on both has been 
sufficiently strong to admit of the crossing of great 
armies with their baggage. In Ham Gyong the 
snow lies deep throughout the whole winter, and 
all the mountains, even in the south, have snow-clad 
summits from autumn to spring. The autumn and 
spring are both delightful seasons, the spring genially 
warm and the autumn crisp and clear, and both are 
beautified by the flora and foliage, by the cherry- 
trees of spring and the maples of autumn, which are 
hardly less varied and abundant than those which 
are the glory of Japan. Only the summer months 
are trying to Europeans. The rainy season, extend- 
ing from the middle of June to the middle of July, is 
enervating and exhausting, and it is followed by two 
months of hot, glaring sumtner, when the deep valleys, 
encircled by the scorched, treeless hills, and cut off 
from all sea breezes, become almost natural furnaces. 



28 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Generally, the climate may be described as colder in 
winter and hotter in summer than are the same 
latitudes in Europe. Europeans have not found it 
unhealthy. 

The origin of the people who inhabit the peninsula 
can only be a subject of conjecture, as is also the 
case in regard to that of the Japanese, with whom 
language and characteristics show that the Koreans 
are closely allied. Two great immigrations to Japan 
occurred in primeval ages : one from Korea, when 
the immigrants landed in the province of Izumo on 
the west coast of the main Island of Japan, directly 
facing Korea and separated from it by one hundred 
miles of sea, and the second from the south, in which 
the landing took place at Hiuga, a province on the 
south-east coast of Kiusiu. Both finally united at 
Yamato, where they became fused into one people, 
the southerners, however, proving the dominant race 
and furnishing the national rulers. The ease with 
which they united, the fact that tradition recalls no 
complications between them caused by linguistic diffi- 
culties, have suggested the theory that both bodies 
had an ultimate common origin, that the southerners 
had, as was the case with those who landed at Izumo, 
their original home in the Steppes of Siberia, but 
reached Japan after more protracted wanderings 
through China and the Malay Archipelago, during 
which they acquired a large admixture of Malay 
blood. ! 

These theories are not supported by what history 
shows was the case in Korea. Before the dawn of the 
Christian era the tribal population of the peninsula 
south of the Han River were distinct in language, 
customs, moral and physical characteristics from 
those north of the river. Those in the south may, 
as did the Hiuga immigrants to Japan, originally 
have found their way from the Malay Archipelago, 






THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 29 

while the northerners undoubtedly came from Man- 
churia and beyond. Both, in the process of time, 
acquired a large admixture of Chinese and Japanese 
blood, hordes of Chinese immigrants pouring into the 
country in the centuries immediately prior to and 
succeeding the beginning of the Christian era, flying 
from the anarchy that then prevailed throughout their 
own empire, while Japanese founded permanent 
settlements over a considerable portion of the south. 
In later ages substantial numbers of Koreans of all 
ranks in life in their turn emigrated and became 
domiciled in Japan, infusing their own blood into 
the Japanese, both of the aristocratic and of -the lower 
classes. Whatever physical influence China and 
Japan may have exerted on the Korean people, it 
was not sufficient to prevent them retaining very 
distinct physiognomic peculiarities which clearly 
differentiate them from both and render it almost 
impossible for any one with knowledge of the three 
to mistake a Korean for either of the others, though 
all three have the invariable Mongol characteristics 
of high cheek-bones, oblique eyes, and bronze skins. 
On the other hand, the nose is less flat than among 
the Japanese, and the upturned nostrils so common 
among the lower classes of the latter are rarely seen 
in Korea. The Koreans are of higher stature than 
the Japanese, the average height of the men being 
5 feet 4 inches, and generally of better physique ; 
the dark, uncurling hair that is universal among both 
Chinese and Japanese is occasionally varied in Korea 
by hair that approaches brown or even a lighter 
hue ; Korean hands and feet are smaller, and the 
expression of the features denotes a higher order of 
intelligence than might be expected from that of 
the Chinese or Japanese. A French writer « compares 
their faces, saillant, poll et decouvert^ with those of 
1 Georges Ducrocq — " Pauvre et Douce Coree." 



30 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the Bretons. The beard is universal, Koreans in this 
respect presenting another marked antagonism to the 
clean-shaven faces of the Chinese and Japanese. 

The languages of both Korea and Japan are of 
the same Turanian family, as closely allied as are 
the Dutch and German or the Italian and Spanish 
languages j in fact, patriotic Japanese philologists l 
have gone so far as to claim that Korean is only a 
branch of Japanese, like the native language of the 
Loo Choo Islands. It might perhaps be more 
correctly said that Japanese is only a branch of 
Korean. Whichever may have been the original pre- 
dominating tongue, not only Japanese but the most 
distinguished English authorities have clearly demon- 
strated from both construction and vocabulary a close 
similarity between both languages ; and that the 
resemblance was anciently much closer than at the 
present day is shown by the fact that in the very 
earliest intercourse between the two countries no 
difficulty whatsoever seems to have been experienced 
in the interchange of ideas. It was not until (a 
comparatively late period that interpreters and trans- 
lators were first mentioned in the national records, 
and it was still later when they became recognised 
as necessary officials. 

The Koreans rigidly maintained their national 
isolation from the rest of the world till the last quarter 
of the nineteenth century. For all our knowledge of 
Japan in the days of her exclusiveness, so far as it 
is founded on European sources of information, we 
are entirely dependent on the French missionaries 
and on a Dutch savant, and the case is almost pre- 
cisely similar in regard to Korea. We have vivid 
accounts of what the people were in the seventeenth 
and in the first half of the nineteenth centuries in the 

1 S. Kanazawa — "The Common Origin of the Japanese and 
Korean Languages." 



THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 31 

monograph, not of a Dutch savant, but of a Dutch 
sailor, and in the letters of the French missionaries, 
summarised in the " Histoire de l'Eglise de Koree," 
who, as their predecessors had made their way into 
Japan, and in devotion to their duty braved persecu- 
tion and death more than two hundred years before, 
made in their turn their way by stealth into Korea, 
and there lived the lives of hunted fugitives until 
those lives were ended by deaths as cruel as any 
suffered by the Christian martyrs of Rome. From 
the writings of both sailor and missionaries a fairly 
full description may be gleaned of the customs and 
institutions of the people when both were founded 
on the social and political systems of China, and when 
no attempt had yet been made to force on them 
the civilisation of Europe, which Japan so eagerly, 
rapidly, and successfully assimilated. 



CHAPTER II 

THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 






Society in Korea was broadly divided into two 
classes, the Yang ban or nobles, and the Ha-in or 
low-men — the commoners — but in each of these classes 
there were many subdivisions, and the lower orders 
of the Yang ban were sufficiently numerous to con- 
stitute what might be called a middle class, corre- 
sponding in their status, but in that alone, to the 
Samurai of Japan. 

The ancient nobility of the old kingdom of Korai, 
the families which traced their descent from the time 
of Silla or were ennobled while the Wang dynasty 
was on the throne, came to an end along with the 
downfall of the dynasty in 1392, when Korai became 
Chosen, and the founders of the greatest and oldest 
families among the modern nobility were the officers 
of the first king of the Taijo dynasty, which con- 
tinued to reign until the annexation of the kingdom 
by Japan. To draw a parallel between Korea and 
England the legitimate descendants of these officers 
may be said to correspond to our own noble families 
who claim to trace their descent from ancestors whb 
came over at the Conquest and for many genera- 
tions they alone constituted the class of nobles. The 
term Yang ban, by which they are described, means 
" the two orders," the two orders being those of the 
civil and military officers. They were at first re- 
cruited only by the sons of the kings born of con- 

32 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 33 

cubines. In the progress of time, however, others 
found their way into their ranks. Concubinage was 
universal, and the sons of nobles born from con- 
cubines and their descendants became so numerous 
in the middle of the last century that they were 
strong enough to demand and acquire the privileges 
of their brothers and the right to employment in 
the higher offices of the Government. Persons who 
rendered signal service, whether of a national or 
personal nature, worthy or unworthy, to the King ; 
others w r ho acquired a high reputation for science 
or learning or who gave marked proof of filial piety, 
the very highest virtue in the Korean moral code, 
were sometimes rewarded with a brevet of nobility ; 
and as the practice of adoption was in full force 
and families therefore never died out, the only 
diminution that could take place in the numbers of 
those who had once been admitted within the privi- 
leged circle was when the head of the house com- 
mitted treason, when all his family, down to a remote 
degree of relationship, were in early years extermi- 
nated, and in later years degraded and relegated to 
the ranks of commoners, or when a noble voluntarily 
descended from his rank by engaging in any in- 
dustrial occupation or by marrying a widow or a 
slave. On the other hand, as the rank of the father 
extended to all his legitimate sons, every son of a 
Yang ban was also a Yang ban. There was, there- 
fore, a large natural increase in the aggregate number 
of the class, and so numerous had they become in the 
progress of time that Yang ban were estimated 
at the time of the annexation by Japan to number 
one-fifth of the entire population. All of them were 
Yang ban, but the representatives of the old nobility, 
the direct descendants of the first creations, main- 
tained a rigid exclusiveness, and regarded those .whose 
right to the title was of later date much in the 

3 



34 THE STORY OF KOREA 

same light as the descendants of a Norman knight 
regard a newly ennobled brewer or banker, or in 
Japan, which, with all its wonderful democratic pro- 
gress, is still steeped to the very lips in aristocratic 
prejudice, the living representative of a long line 
of Kuge, the Court nobles who trace their descent 
from former emperors, or even direct from the gods 
of heaven, regard one of the great statesmen or 
soldiers whose national services have won his en- 
rolment among the highest ranks of the present 
peerage. Properly speaking, the representatives 
of the old families form the only class of nobles, 
while the parvenus constitute the nearest approach 
that Korea presents to a middle class. 

The privileges of the Yang ban were great and 
continued to be so until, in the present generation, 
drastic democratic reforms were made under the com- 
pulsion of Japan. Theoretically all offices in the 
Government, from the highest minister at the capital 
down to the humblest prefectural clerk in the 
provinces, were, on the Chinese system, open to the 
successful candidates at the annual competitive 
literary examinations. Practically they were monopo- 
lised by the Yang ban, and even among ithem 
the passports to success were not literary skill, but 
influence and bribery. When they failed to obtain 
office, the only employment that was open for them 
was that of teaching. From all others they were 
debarred by their rank, and any attempt to engage 
in either trade or industry was at once followed by 
social degradation. There were, therefore, hosts of 
Yang ban who passed their lives as idle, unproductive 
drones, jealously clinging to all the ancient privi- 
leges of their rank, but content to extort their liveli- 
hood and the wherewithal for their pleasure from 
a peasantry that was always sunk in grinding 
poverty. The highest occupation of the best among 




YANGBAN — AN ARCHERY MEETING 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p, 34. 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 35 

these failures was the study of the Chinese classics ; 
their pleasures were found in gossip with friends 
of their own class, equally disappointed in life and 
equally idle, in social gatherings that were enlivened 
by the accomplishments of the Gesang. Hunting 
was beneath their dignity ; they followed the ancient 
sport of archery, in which the Koreans excelled ; 
but manly games were unknown to them, and their 
whole existence was one of utter vacuousness. In 
their eyes the common people were merely ministers 
to their needs and pleasures. 

As already said, a Yang ban could do no w r ork. 
He might possess a few acres of land, which were 
cultivated for him on similar terms to those under 
which the Irish peasant tilled the holding that he 
rented from an idle, impecunious landlord prior to 
the earlier Gladstonian legislation. The peasant 
could retain out of the proceeds what, on the most 
grinding estimate, was sufficient to keep body and 
soul together in himself and his family, who all 
aided him in his work. All else went to the land- 
lord. The latter could claim forced labour when- 
ever he wanted it ; could use the horses and cattle 
of his tenant or of any commoner without payment ; 
when travelling could claim food and lodging from 
the local magistrate of each district, the magistrate 
in his turn recouping himself by fresh exactions on 
the peasants ; could also claim forced loans if it 
should come to his knowledge that his tenant or 
neighbouring tradesman or peasant had, by any 
stroke of luck, increased his usual earnings ; and no 
matter how great the social pride and exclusiveness of 
the Yang ban, neither ever prevented him applying 
for a loan to either townsman or farmer, but they 
did prevent him even contemplating the indignity 
of repayment. The privilege of ignoring his debts 
was customary though not legal. Recognised legal 



36 THE STORY OF KOREA 

rights were, however, many. His house was inviolate 
against the law and he himself against arrest except 
for treason. Plebeians on horseback were obliged 
to dismount when passing his house or on meeting 
him on the highway (in Japan they were not allowed 
to ride at all). He was entitled without paying for 
it to the best accommodation in inns. He was not 
compelled to appeal to the law to vindicate his dignity 
when offended, but was free to take the matter into 
his own hands and to measure out what punishment 
he liked. Magistrates of his own class, even if of 
a different political party, had no wish to interfere 
with him ; and if they had the wish, they dared not 
exercise it, as by so doing they would offend the ,whole 
of their order. If condemned to death, a penalty 
which was only inflicted for treason, the sentence 
was carried out, not publicly on the common execu- 
tion-ground as in the case of ordinary people for 
all offences, whether great or trivial, not with the 
slow torture which often accompanied the latter cases, 
but in secret, and in a manner which bore some 
resemblance to the samurai's treasured privilege of 
seppuku (harakiri). The Korean noble withdrew to 
his own apartment, where he took a cup of poison, 
and his end was as speedy as that of the Samurai 
when his head fell beneath the sword of his second. 
Whatever his vices and faults, the Yang ban was 
a picturesque figure, almost as much so, though in 
a different way, as the silk -clad, sword-girdled 
Samurai. Clad in flowing garments either of spot- 
less white or of silk of brilliant green, blue, or purple 
dyes, his stature intensified by his tall, broad- 
brimmed, conical hat of finely woven bamboo, 
lacquered in black to a degree of polish that would 
delight the heart of a Piccadilly lounger, he cultivated 
a slow and dignified gait, an erect carriage, and a 
haughty demeanour. If rich enough, he was, in his 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 37 

walks or rides, supported on either side by a servant, 
and whether attended or alone, whether on foot or 
on horseback, nothing on earth could induce him to 
derogate his dignity by an appearance of haste. 

As the Samurai of Japan belonged to separate 
fiefs, so did the Yang ban of Korea belong to separate 
political parties of their own class. The earliest 
of these parties, which are described in another 
chapter, 1 were formed in the sixteenth century, and to 
one or other of them every Yang ban belonged, not 
choosing his own party by personal predilection or 
sympathy, but solely by the claims of heredity. The 
rival parties were saturated with the most intense 
hereditary hatred of each other, carried to the degree 
that intermarriage between them was unknown. The 
whole serious business of life of all their members 
was to defend themselves from or to cause injury 
to their antagonists of the opposite parties, and the 
only occasions on which they ever united was when 
the rights or privileges of their whole class were 
threatened. Then they invariably presented a solid 
front. At all times the fortunes of all members of 
each party were bound by the closest ties of self- 
interest. When the leader of one won the favour of 
the King and secured high office, his first use of it 
was to provide for all his followers, and on the fall 
of his rival, all followers of the latter, down to the 
humblest, shared in his loss of office. There was 
no permanent service either military or civil, unless 
in so far as one party had a long tenure of the royal 
favour and consequently of office. In one instance 
this tenure extended for over half a century, during 
the whole of which all the members of the other 
parties were absolutely excluded from any share in 
the administration, from any opportunity of devoting 
their abilities to the national service in any capacity 

1 Vide p. 134. 



38 THE STORY OF KOREA 

whatever. In such times many of them fell into 
the extremes of poverty. The missionaries tell of 
instances they have known where nobles, who had 
no commoners to plunder, could only eat rice once 
every three or four days, could neither have fires 
nor sufficient clothing in the most severe weather, 
and even died of cold and hunger. No privation 
could induce them to stain their rank by work. To 
have done so would have been to put an end to all 
the hopes under which they were content to suffer, 
that a turn in a wheel of fortune would some time 
bring their own party into power and office to 
themselves. 

It has been already said that theoretically all 
Government appointments were given to the 
successful candidates in the annual literary examina- 
tion. In practice the system was that the King took 
the leader of one of the great parties as his Prime 
Minister, and that the latter distributed the offices 
to his adherents at his pleasure. Many of the Kings 
of Korea were vigorous and capable rulers, who took 
and held the administration in their own hands with 
a firm grasp. Many of them, on the other hand, were 
quite the reverse, and were, vis-a-vis their prime 
ministers, as much rois faineants as were the Emperors 
of Japan when the Shoguns were in power. Just as 
the Shogun could do anything in the name of the 
Emperor and could rely on his ratification of all he 
did, so could the Korean minister do as he pleased 
when acting in the name of a weak or careless 
sovereign, who, though he did not possess the divine 
attributes of the heaven-descended Mikados, was 
vested by his people with a reverence which fell short 
only of that due to the gods, and with authority that 
reached the very extreme limits of the most unfettered 
absolutism. 

The King's person was always sacred. No subject 




YANGBAN AT HOME — A GAME OF CHESS. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London 



To face p. 38. 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 39 

was ever permitted to mention his name in his life- 
time, no male subject permitted to touch him, none 
even to approach him except in the attitude of the 
most reverential humility. If, by accident, he touched 
any one, the place where he did so became sacred 
and had to be distinguished by a red ribbon for 
ever afterwards. His countenance was never engraved 
on the coins of the realm, where it could be soiled 
by the touch of vulgar hands. His portrait could 
only be painted after his death. No one could 
appear in his presence in mourning garb, none wear 
spectacles before him. Above all, nothing made of 
iron could ever touch him, and king's have died in 
consequence, when their lives might have been saved 
by the timely application of a lance which no surgeon 
'dared to use on them. When he died the whole 
nation went into mourning for three years, the pre- 
scribed period of mourning for a father, for the 
King was the father of all his people. For the first 
five months of this period a strict prohibition was 
laid on marriages, public or private entertainments, 
the slaughter of animals, the execution of criminals, 
and clothes made of unbleached hemp were alone 
allowed to be worn. 

The prerogatives of the King were on a par with 
the semi-divinity in which he was hedged. He was 
always absolute both in name and reality. The law 
was what he willed it to be. Over all his subjects, 
from the princes of his own line down to the humblest 
peasant, he had the power of life and death. Their 
property, as well as their lives, was at his disposal. 
His duty was to watch over the public weal, to 
secure the observance of the laws, and to protect the 
people against tyranny or extortion on the part of 
the officials. When the King was strong and capable, 
as some were, his duty was performed so far as was 
within ( the capacity and judgment of one human being 



40 THE STORY OF KOREA 

who was necessarily dependent on others for the 
carrying out of his commands ; but when his up- 
bringing in a servile and corrupt Court had its 
natural result in developing the worst vices of human 
frailty, weak and vicious himself, and surrounded 
and influenced only by the palace women and 
avaricious eunuchs, he often gave way to unrestrained 
debauchery, and became as incapable as he was un- 
willing to discharge efficiently the duties of his royal 
office. Then the contending factions of the Court 
had full scope for the exercise of their talents for 
intrigue, and high office was given, not to the able 
and upright but to the sycophant and pander who 
most successfully ministered to his master's worst 
vices. 

All offices were used unscrupulously for the spolia- 
tion of the people and the enrichment of the holders. 
The King, the people said, " saw nothing, knew 
nothing, could do nothing.' ' The limit of taxation 
or extortion was only that of the people to pay. 
With a country blessed by Nature with a bountiful 
soil and abundant rainfall, a splendid climate, and 
undoubted sources of great mineral wealth, entirely 
exempt from all the great disasters of flood and 
earthquake that are the terrors of Japan, the peasants, 
who constituted nine -tenths of the common people, 
though gifted with great physical strength and powers 
of endurance, with moral and intellectual qualities 
that were not inferior to those of their industrious 
Chinese neighbours, with physical courage that made 
them as fearless of death or pain as the bravest of 
Japanese, had no incentive to industry when all the 
products of their labour were ruthlessly appropriated 
by the nobles and officials and only the barest pit- 
tances left to the producers. Hunger was always 
present with them, famine frequently, and cholera 
followed in the track of famine to complete the work 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 41 

which it had begun. All these circumstances com- 
bined to render the peasants the most hopeless, 
helpless, apathetic, broken-spirited people on earth, 
compared with whom the Irish Roman Catholic, in 
the worst days of Orange domination and landlord 
absolutism, or the Russian serf might almost be called 
free, prosperous, and happy. 

Such were the conditions of the Korean people 
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
and these conditions continued with but little 
modification till the beginning of the Japanese 
Protectorate in 1905. The rapacity and tyranny of 
the nobles were too engrained by long usance, the 
people too convinced that their only lot in life was 
to act as hewers of wood and drawers of water t,o 
their masters, to admit of either being reformed, even 
by contact with the outer world, unless reform was 
forced on them as medicine is forced on a sick and 
refractory child. 

The feature of the social system of Korea which 
most forcibly impressed the first Europeans who 
visited the country after its opening to the world, 
as it also did the French missionaries, was not the 
tyranny and idleness of the nobles, nor the degrada- 
tion and misery of the peasants, striking though both 
were, but the absolute subjection of women. In other 
countries nobles were greedy and tyrannical and 
peasants starved and oppressed, but none afforded 
a parallel to the lot of Korean women. Rigid 
Mohammedans kept their women in absolute seclu- 
sion, but gave them lives of ease. The red Indians 
of America forced theirs to lead lives of unremitting 
and unending toil, but gave them liberty. The 
Koreans practised the vices of both without the 
redeeming indulgences of either. 

In her childhood and girlhood the Korean woman 
was and is the abject slave of her parents, in wife- 



42 THE STORY OF KOREA 

hood of her husband, in widowhood a pariah ; and 
throughout all her life a soul-destroying, monotonous 
imprisonment was only relieved by a very few hours' 
liberty in the streets when night had fallen and, as 
far as men were concerned, the pleasures and work 
of the day were over. Women had no existence in 
the eyes of the law, no personal rights, not even 
names. They were only spoken of as the daughter, 
sister, or wife, as the case might be, of the men in 
whose houses they lived, who were their guardians, 
masters, and owners for the time being. Women 
who had no male guardian were like ownerless 
animals — the property of the first man who cared to 
take possession of them. 

In her marriage the woman had no voice ; Jier 
husband was selected for her by her father ; she 
never saw him, nor indeed any man outside the circle 
of her own family, before her wedding-day, and 
even then etiquette did not permit her, throughout 
all the wedding festivities and ceremonial, to ex- 
change a single word with him, not even when both 
had retired to the nuptial chamber. There, let the 
young husband be as gallant and amorous as he 
might, even heap compliments or questions on her, 
etiquette demanded that, seated in a corner of the 
room, she should remain dumb and immovable as 
a statue. The husband might disrobe her of her 
voluminous wedding garments ; she could neither 
assist nor repel him, neither utter a word nor make 
a gesture. The female servants of the family were 
all the time spying on her from the windows anjd 
straining their ears at the doors, and the least 
violation on her part of all that female etiquettte 
prescribed was quickly reported and made her the 
laughing-stock of her women friends. Once a young 
husband laid a wager with his friends that he would 
make his bride speak at their first interview. After 




A YANGBAN S SEDAN CHAIR. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 42. 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 43 

many vain efforts he at last said that the astrologers, 
when drawing his horoscope, had predicted for him 
a mute from birth as his wife ; he now saw their 
predictions were fulfilled, but he was resolved not 
to retain a mute as his wife. The bride might have 
safely preserved her silence, for a marriage, once 
the legal formalities are concluded, cannot be 
annulled even by the newly discovered dumbness, 
deafness, or impotency of either party. Stung, how- 
ever, by his words, she answered bitterly : " My 
horoscope is even worse. The astrologer foretold 
that my husband should be the son of a rat, and he 
was not wrong." This is the most contemptuous 
epithet in the Korean vocabulary, and it reflects not 
only upon the person to whom it is applied but on 
his father, who is the subject of infinite veneration 
to every Korean son. The bridegroom, in this case, 
I gained his wager, but he had to pay dearly for it 
in submitting to the jeers of his friends at the only 
speech which he had drawn from his bride, when 
they heard of what occurred from the prying maid- 
servants. 

After marriage the secluded life of the woman 
continued unchanged. Her husband never consulted 
her, rarely even conversed with her. She was to 
him only one who would work for him, secure his 
comforts, and give him children. All her duties were 
towards him. She was required to be devoted, 
obedient, careful of his property and his reputation, 
to bring up his children in due observance of filial 
piety towards him, and to manage his household. 
The husband owed nothing to her. Conjugal fidelity 
had no part in his moral code ; it was obligatory 
on the wife, who was not permitted to harbour even 
a thought of jealousy against her rival. She could, 
if her husband were generous, entertain or visit her 
female friends, but could never look on or be seen 



44 THE STORY OF KOREA 

by another man, not even by her own relations unless 
in the very nearest degree. If she were touched or 
even seen by one, she would be dishonoured for 
ever, a principle of ethics which occasionally pro- 
duced a result contrary to its intention. If a man, 
no matter what he may have been, outlaw or thief, 
gained secret access to a woman's apartments, it 
was safer for her to yield to him in silence rather 
than obtain protection by calling for it. In the 
latter case, it was known that she had been seen by 
a strange man and she was lost for ever. In the 
former, her dishonour might remain undiscovered 
and her reputation be saved. Even from her own 
children she could only expect a tithe of the reverence 
that it was her duty to teach them to render to their 
father. Filial piety was the first thing that was 
taught to every child in its own home, but the mother 
had no share in it. Children, especially boys, were 
tenderly loved and carefully brought up ; but the 
sons quickly learned, even in early childhood, that 
their mothers were domestic nullities, to whom no 
obedience, scarcely a pretence of obedience, was due. 
At the age of eight years they were removed from 
the inner, screened apartments of their homes where 
their mothers and sisters passed their lives. Thence- 
forward they lived entirely with the men, and all that 
they heard, all that they could see, served only to 
teach them the infinite inferiority of women ; and 
in the pride of their sex they quickly learned the 
scornful contempt for both mother and sisters which 
continued to all women throughout all their lives. 
The girls remained with their mother, and, by pre- 
cept and example, were taught to bear the burden 
of inferiority that belongs to a lower order of human 
beings. 

Death did not dissolve the disparity between the 
sexes. A widower wore half mourning for a few 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 45 

j months, then remarried. A widow was obliged to 
wear deep mourning and remain a widow for all her 
life, no matter how young she might have been at 
the beginning of her widowhood ; her remarriage 
was an infamy and the law regarded the children 
born of such a marriage as illegitimate, and a noble 
who descended to such an alliance, equally with one 
who married a slave, was degraded from his rank 
to the level of the commoner. The natural result 
followed on this enforced chastity, and many young 
widows became the concubines of those who were 
i willing to keep them. Those who endeavoured to 
lead honourable lives were exposed to many perils 
in their loneliness. Sometimes they were drugged 
and recovered to find a ravisher at their side who 
| had dishonoured them in their stupor ; sometimes 
they were forcibly carried away during the night, 
^ and once a widow had become the victim of a man 
who lusted for her, no matter by what fraud or 
violence he had effected his purpose, law and custom 
made her his for ever. Widows not infrequently 
" followed their husbands in death " rather than face 
their future, and once, when there were rumours 
of civil war, Christian converts who were widows 
asked the priests for a dispensation to commit suicide 
if the troops on either side came near their dwellings 
as the only way to escape dishonour, and the fathers 
had the utmost difficulty in convincing them that even 
the fate they dreaded would not justify suicide, " a 
crime that was abominable before God." 

While such was the social status of women — 
ciphers both in society and in their own families — 
they, on the other hand, received a certain amount 
of outward politeness. Their own apartments were 
inviolable, sacred even to the officers of the law 
except in the case of treason. If a would-be pur- 
chaser proposed to visit a house that was for sale, 



46 THE STORY OF KOREA 

he gave warning of his coming, so that the women's 
apartments might be closed, and he inspected only 
the general rooms that were used by the men of the 
house, and in which strangers were received. If a 
man wished to ascend to the roof of his own house, 
he first warned his neighbours, so that the doors and 
windows of the women's apartments in theirs might 
be closed. Even a husband, much though he might 
despise his wife, invariably used honorific terms in 
addressing her and the female members of his house- 
hold, the slaves alone excepted ; and in the streets the 
wall was invariably given to women, though only the 
poorest and lowest were ever seen in them by men. 
And every day the great curfew bell of the capital 
rang at nine o'clock, when darkness had fallen, as 
a signal to all the men that they must hurry home 
and take their turn in rigid domestic seclusion. Then 
the women trooped forth, and for a few hours they had 
the streets entirely to themselves, very drastic punish- 
ment being inflicted on any man who violated their 
privilege. The custom died out when Europeans, 
who could not be confined to their homes at any 
hour, began to reside in Seoul, and the streets are 
not now denuded of men. But its spirit remains, and 
nightfall still brings the time of comparative freedom 
for the women, when they are released from their 
prisons and permitted to take the air in the streets 
or to make visits to their friends. The rich are 
carried in chairs, closely screened ; the well-to-do 
go on foot, but veiled or hooded, and attended by a 
servant, so their freedom is limited ; but human nature, 
though bound in iron fetters, is the same in Seoul 
as it is all over the world, and if romances reflect 
the true life of the people, the most rigid seclusion 
is not always effective in preventing the formation 
of liaisons, and the nightly liberation gives the oppor- 
tunity of meetings that is not always neglected. Both 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 47 

sexes have strong physical passions, and no barriers 
of religion, morality, or custom prevent their grati- 
fication when opportunity permits it without certainty 
of discovery. 

The description of the status of Korean women has 
been written in the past tense, as in its utmost strict- 
ness it applies to the years antecedent to the opening 
of Korea to the world, but very little modification is 
required to render it applicable to the women of the 
present day, when Korea has already had over thirty 
years' experience of the manners and customs of other 
nations. Some changes have taken place in their 
condition, and the abolition of their monopoly of 
the streets after nightfall is not the only reform which 
has been made in the customs that peculiarly affected 
them. Widows are now permitted to remarry, and 
girls to decline marriage until they have attained the 
age of sixteen. But all the reforms that have been 
made have not yet brought about any radical change 
in the social bonds that fetter their liberty and mental 
development. As they were in the days when the 
Roman Catholic missionaries, hidden in the houses of 
their native converts, in the confidence that was 
reposed in pastors whose purity and devotion were 
tested in the fierce fires of cruel persecution, were 
able to see and learn something of their lives, so they 
are to-day, secluded prisoners in their homes, nullities 
in all the incidents of life both within and beyond 
the walls of those homes. They are not altogether 
deficient in education. Some have a direct know- 
ledge of the Chinese classics ; all can read the 
numerous translations in their own vernacular, printed 
in the Korean script ; but the portions which are 
available to women are those which inculcate their 
main duties, reverence and obedience to husbands 
and their parents, the upbringing of children and 
household duties, in all of which uncomplaining and 



48 THE STORY OF KOREA 

unquestioning subjection is taught as a virtue that 
is on a par with chastity. Foreigners, not only 
Europeans but Chinese and Japanese, know little 
of them. All their descriptions of Korean women, 
of their slender, graceful, supple figures, their expres- 
sion of grave melancholy, their features, beautiful 
with small mouths, oval chins, frank eyes, fair com- 
plexions, crowned with heavy masses of ebony black 
hair, are founded on what these foreigners have seen 
of the Gesang, the sisters of the Geisha of Japan, 
chosen like the Geisha for their beauty when young, 
and like them taught and trained so as to be sparkling 
companions for men. To the present day, women of 
the upper classes only appear in the streets in 
screened chairs, of the middle closely veiled, and 
both are as inaccessible to the view as they are 
to the interchange of ideas with the European resi- 
dent or visitor. The women of the lower classes, 
whose share in the toils of daily life necessitates 
their appearance by day outside their own homes, 
do not now, at least in the capital and the principal 
trading ports, fly like frightened hares when they 
meet a European, as they used to do in the early 
years after the opening of the country, but they 
still avert their faces and do their best not to be 
seen. A man of their own country never even 
glances at them. It would be far beneath his 
dignity to do so, and any dereliction from what 
dignity imposed upon him would only expose him 
to the ridicule or contempt of his fellow-men. The 
chief occupation of the women of the lower classes 
is that of acting as washerwomen to the males of 
their family. The universal garment of men of all 
classes, except the high Yang ban or officials twho 
occasionally wear coloured silks, both in winter and 
summer, are long flowing robes of white cotton, and 
it is the task of the women to keep these robes in 



sm^ 




:-.,.- : - 



A YANGBAN'S RESIDENCE — ENTRANCE. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 48. 



I 



SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA 49 

the spotless cleanliness that is universal except among 
the lowest labourers. Seoul has sometimes been 
described as one great laundry, where the tap of 
the wooden rollers with which the garments are 
beaten to produce a fine gloss is heard from every 
house at every hour of the day and night, and was, 
until tramways and carts made their appearance, the 
principal sound that broke the still calm of the 
streets. The reward of all this labour is or 
was that the streets of a Korean town had always a 
festal air by day. In the darkness of early night, 
while the men were still abroad, they seemed to be 
traversed by an unending line of ghostly visitors, 
an impression which was aided by the slow and 
stately movements that were the mark of the Yang 
ban and were imitated as well as they could be 
by traders and well-to-do artisans. 



\ 



CHAPTER II I 

THE DARK AGES 

Korea claims to date the beginning of her history 
from the year 2333 B.C., nearly seventeen hundred 
years prior to the accession of Jimmu Tenno to the 
Imperial throne of Japan, and, to take a Western 
parallel, nearly sixteen hundred years prior to the 
founding of the city of Rome. In that year the 
son of the Creator of Heaven descended with a 
retinue of heavenly spirits, alighting on a mountain 
in what is now the province of Phyong An, and there 
beneath the shade of a santal-tree, in the presence 
of his attendant spirits, he proclaimed himself Lord 
of all the earthly world, assuming the name of " Tan 
Gun " or the Lord of the Santal-tree. Though on 
earth he retained divine immortality, for his reign 
lasted for over one thousand years, and then he 
did not die but resumed his original heavenly form 
and disappeared from the earth. Relics of him and 
his reign still remain. An altar built by him still 
exists on Mount Mari in the island of Kang Wha. 
Phyong An, a city famous throughout all the history 
of Korea, from his time to the present day, is said 
to have been his capital, and while he ascended to 
heaven without dying, his grave is still shown in the 
province at Kang Tong. He had a son who was 
driven from his father's kingdom by Ki Tse, and 
who, flying northwards, founded a new kingdom in the 
far north to which he gave the name of Puyu, which 

50 



THE DARK AGES 51 

we shall find influencing the destinies of Korea after 
another thousand years have passed. 

Ki Tse, before whom the son of Tan Gun fled, is 
regarded as the founder of Korean civilisation. In 
the twelfth century preceding the Christian era the 
Yin dynasty of the Emperors of China, which had 
lasted from 1766 B.C., was tottering to its fall. The 
last of the race was the Emperor Chow, whose 
cruelty and vices made his subjects rise in rebellion 
and destroy him and all his family. He had been 
fortunate in having three sages as his ministers who 
had vainly endeavoured to divert him from his evil 
courses. Two of them were put to death at the 
instigation of a beautiful concubine with whom he 
was infatuated ; and the third, Ki Tse, though closely 
allied by blood to the Emperor, was in prison when 
the revolution took place. He was at once re- 
leased, and the new Emperor offered to restore him 
to his old dignities. Notwithstanding all he had 
suffered, he was still loyal to the memory of his 
former master, and found it impossible to serve the 
usurper to whom that master owed his ruin, however 
well merited it was. He chose rather to expatriate 
himself and seek a home in a new land, and, accom- 
panied in his exodus by five thousand faithful 
followers, he migrated to Korea, and there founded 
a kingdom to which he gave the name of Chosen, 
the Land of the Morning Calm. This was in the year 
1 122 B.C. 

Whether his migration took place by sea or land 
is not known, nor is the precise locality of the new 
kingdom definitely acknowledged. Some historians 
say that it was entirely outside the boundaries of 
modern Korea, and that it lay where the Chinese 
province Sheng King now is. But the version dear 
to the hearts of Koreans is that he came by sea and 
landed somewhere south of the Han River ; that 



52 THE STORY OF KOREA 

his capital was, as was that of Tan Gun, at the city 
of Phyong An, and that his kingdom was originally 
in the Korean provinces of Phyong An and Hoang- 
hai, though it subsequently spread in the north until 
its boundary became the River Liao. Whatever be 
the truth, Ki Tse and his followers brought with 
them the elements of civilisation, of industry, and 
of good government Before his coming the land 
which he occupied was peopled by nine wild tribes 
who dressed in grass, lived under the trees in summer 
and in holes in the earth in winter, and fed on 
berries. He introduced among them the arts and 
industries of China, taught them tillage and seri- 
culture ; above all, he taught them propriety, the 
proper relations that exist among civilised mankind, 
those of king and subject, parent and child, husband 
and wife, old and young, master and servant, and 
gave them the *' eight simple laws," under which 
peace and order were so well maintained that robbery 
was unknown, doors and shutters were never closed, 
not even during the night, and women were rigidly 
chaste. Ki Tse reigned for thirty-one years, and, 
dying in 1083 B.C., left a kingdom which was ruled 
by his direct descendants for nearly nine hundred 
years. The last of the dynasty was Ki jun, fwho 
reigned at his ancestral capital of Phyong An from 
221 to 193 B.C. His fall was an indirect conse- 
quence of wars in the North of China. Yen, a 
tributary State of that Empire, coterminous with 
Chosen, from which it was separated by the River 
Liao, rose in rebellion against its suzerain, and in the 
wars which followed and culminated in the total defeat 
of the rebel State, many of its inhabitants sought 
refuge from the invading Chinese armies in the neigh- 
bouring kingdom of Chosen. Among them was one 
of their generals, named Wiman. Coming to Korea 
a beaten refugee, he was kindly received by the 



THE DARK AGES 53 

King, and given land in the north of the kingdom, 
whereon he established himself and his followers, 
where he promised to act as a frontier guard. He 
was, however, ambitious and treacherous. He had 
already his own followers ; there were many of his 
own compatriots who had preceded him in his flight 
and were already settled in the north, and from the 
first he laid himself out to win the goodwill of the 
local tribes. When he felt secure in his strength, 
in the union of all three — his own followers, his 
countrymen who had preceded him, and the local 
tribes — he suddenly marched on Phyong An, treacher- 
ously announcing that he was coming to guard the 
capital and the King against an apocryphal Chinese 
invasion. Too late his treachery was discovered. 
No defence could be made against him, and all that 
was left for the last of the Ki Tse dynasty to do 
was to find personal safety in flight to the south of 
the peninsula, while Wiman entered Phyong An and 
proclaimed himself king in his stead. 

Wiman's administration was vigorous and suc- 
cessful. He soon procured his investiture as King 
from the Emperor of China, who seemed not only to 
have overlooked the fact that he had shortly before 
been a rebel, but to have now sought his services as 
a check against barbarian inroads to his own Empire 
from the north. Secure in his position, with the 
moral support of China and the material support of 
his own army of adventurers, he considerably en- 
larged the original Chosen territory and was able to 
secure the succession to his own descendants. But 
once their position was assured, both he and they, in 
the pride of their triumph, neglected their duty as 
vassals of sending tribute -bearing missions to the 
Emperor, and no one went from their dominions " to 
see the Emperor's face." During the reign of Wi- 
man's grandson, Yu Ku, a Chinese envoy, came to 



54 THE STORY OF KOREA 

his capital and reproved him for this neglect but 
without result. Yu Ku still refused to fulfil his 
duty, and the envoy, forced to return without accom- 
plishing his mission, and vexed at his failure, when 
near the frontier on his way back to his own country, 
caused his charioteer to murder the Prince to whom 
Yu Ku had deputed the task of courteously escorting 
him. Having accomplished this treachery, the envoy 
hastily crossed the frontier and reported to the 
Emperor that he had killed a Korean general, and for 
his feat, his report of which was received without 
question, he was rewarded with the appointment of 
" Protector of the Eastern Tribes of Liao Tung." J 
At this time the kingdom of Korea was coterminous 
with Liao Tung and comprised all that portion of 
modern Manchuria that extends as far as the sources 
of the Sugari as well as the three northern provinces 
of modern Korea, its boundaries being the sea on 
the east and west and the River Han on the south, 
and all the tribes throughout this great extent of 
territory had submitted to the authority of Wiman 
and his successors. Yu Ku could therefore call to 
arms a fighting force, powerful in numbers and 
rendered by their mode of life as nomads and hunters 
formidable as fighting units. With such means at his 
disposal, it was not likely that he should permit the 
treacherous murder of his officer and relative to go 
unavenged. He promptly gathered his army and, 
marching into Liao Tung, attacked and killed the 
" Protector of the Eastern Tribes;" By this action 
he had thrown the gauntlet of defiance in the face 
of the Emperor — one of the powerful and vigorous 
Han dynasty — and knew he would have to pay the 
penalty. Withdrawing, therefore, at once to his own 
territories, he made preparations to meet the invasion 
that would soon be on him. The Emperor sent two 
1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." 



THE DARK AGES 55 

forces against him. One, of 50,000 men, commanded 
by an admiral, was sent by sea from Shantung and 
consisted of men of that province, all of powerful 
physique and capable of great endurance. The other, 
composed of Liao Tung men, many of them released 
criminals, marched by land under the command of a 
lieutenant-general, the objective of both being Yi 
Ku's capital. The plans of the invaders were badly 
laid, and instead of concentrating simultaneously 
before the capital, as did three Japanese armies in 
our own day on the outbreak of the China war with 
Japan in 1894, the marine force appeared first by 
itself, and the garrison at once attacked and scattered 
it, the admiral himself being obliged to fly to the 
mountains and ten days passing before he was able 
to reassemble his fugitive men. The general was 
not more fortunate. " His men nearly all exposed 
themselves to the penalty of decapitation by break- 
ing into disorder and running back at the first on- 
slaught," I and he could make no impression on the 
division of the Korean army that faced him. 

Both sides were now at a deadlock. The two Chinese 
armies were in Korea, and though kept at bay by the 
victorious Koreans could not be dislodged, while the 
Chinese on their side could not break the Korean 
resistance. So recourse was once more had to 
diplomacy, and a second envoy was sent by the 
Emperor " to deliver a lecture to Yu Ku." The 
latter professed his regret for what had passed and 
his readiness to tender his submission as vassal to 
the Emperor, but he feared that the officers who 
represented him might again be treacherously 
murdered as was the first. Neither side could trust 
the other. Yu Ku would not send his son, who was 
proposed as messenger, within the Chinese lines with- 
out a strong escort, which the Chinese would not 
1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." 



56 THE STORY OF KOREA 

admit. So the negotiation fell through. The Chinese 
envoy, having reported his failure to the Emperor, 
was promptly executed, and the war was resumed. 
Both Chinese commanders were now more suc- 
cessful. The general, reinforced by troops from 
Chihli and Shansi, who showed more courage than 
the released criminals from Liao Tung, defeated the 
Koreans, and, advancing on the capital, invested it 
on the north, while the admiral, having reorganised 
his beaten men, co-operated with him by investing 
it on the south. The relations between the two 
were, however, not cordial, and the spirit of their 
two armies was not the same. One, flushed with 
recent victory, was anxious for more glory, and its 
commander wished to press the siege to the utmost. 
The other had not yet recovered from its first 
defeat, and its admiral, depressed and humiliated, 
sought rather to come to terms with the besieged. 
Between the two nothing was done, and the Koreans 
then, as now and ever in their history, fighting stoutly 
behind their walls, held out for many months. 
Wearied with the long delay, the Emperor sent a 
high military commissioner with full powers to settle 
the differences between the two commanders. He 
accepted the general's explanation that the weakness 
and pusillanimity of the admiral were the cause of 
the long delay, and that they must eventuate, if 
they continued, in the destruction of both armies. 
So the admiral was placed under arrest, and the siege 
continued under the general. Still the city held 
out, and it was only taken at last, in the summer 
of 1 08 B.C., when Yu Ku, who to the end refused to 
talk of surrender, had been murdered by his own 
officers and the gates opened by the murderers. This 
was the end of the ancient kingdom of Chosen. Its 
dominions were incorporated into the Chinese Empire 
and divided into four military provinces under 



THE DARK AGES 57 

Chinese governors, and for over a hundred years re- 
mained under Chinese domination. The fate of the 
two military commanders who had contributed to 
its downfall is a curious illustration of the Chinese 
methods of dealing with their officers. The weak 
and timorous admiral, who had done nothing but 
thwart the designs of his colleague, was sentenced 
to death, but was permitted to condone the death 
penalty by a fine and reduction to the rank of com- 
moners. The general, who had won victories, who 
had vigorously endeavoured to hasten the siege, and 
had, throughout all the campaign, the confidence of 
his men, was on his return to his own capital " con- 
victed of desire for glorification, jealousy, and 
wrong-headed strategy, and was cut to pieces in 
the market-place." l 

The northern boundaries of old Chosen are not 
clearly known, and were probably never delineated 
while the kingdom existed. Beyond them, the vast 
plains of Manchuria were inhabited by numbers of 
tribes who, in the last century preceding the Christian 
era, began to organise themselves into petty States. 
While professing a nominal allegiance to the Emperor 
of China, these States were perfectly independent in 
both their internal and external administration, 
governing themselves and making war on or alliances 
with each other as they pleased, without reference 
to their suzerain. One of them, lying immediately to 
the south of the River Sungari, was called Puyu, 
and was said, as already mentioned in this chapter, 
to have been founded in the Dark Ages by the 
son of the mythical Tan Gun. North, and separated 
from it by the Sungari, was another tribe or 
State, which found its home in the delta formed 
by the Rivers Sungari and Amur to the west of 
their junction, and was called Korai or Kaoli, 
1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." 



58 THE STORY OF KOREA 

but the time at which it existed was so ancient " that 
even the Chinese historians mention it with a degree 
of scepticism/' While the chief of this barbarian 
tribe was once absent, on a hunting excursion, one 
of his damsels was found to be with child. She 
said that she had seen in the sky a vapour as 
large as an egg which descended on her, in conse- 
quence of which she conceived. The chief, who 
had at first meditated killing her, on hearing this 
explanation of her condition, put her in prison, where 
a son was born to her in due course of time. The 
chief was equally afraid to kill or preserve a child 
so miraculously born, and it was by his orders thrown 
to the pigs, but the pigs breathed upon it and kept 
it alive. Then it was thrown among the horses, 
but they did as the pigs had done, and so the babe 
still lived, and the chief, now convinced that it was 
of supernatural birth, restored it to its mother. It 
was named Tung Ming (Eastern Brightness), and 
when the babe grew T up a brave youth and a skilful 
archer, the old chief became jealous of him and 
sought to slay him. Then the youth fled southwards 
until he found himself stopped by the river. In 
despair, he shot his arrows into the water, when 
all the fish and tortoises of the river came to the 
surface, and, crowding together to avoid his arrows, 
formed with their backs a bridge upon which he 
crossed in safety. He was now in Puyu and became 
its king. The people of Puyu had already emerged 
from barbarism ; their home was in the largest 
of the Eastern plains, which were rich and fertile 
and produced the five cereals in abundance, and 
they had many of the elements of primitive 
civilisation. 

"They had circular stockades in place of city walls, palace 
buildings, granaries, stores, and prisons. They were of an uncouth, 
robust, and hardy habit, and yet scrupulously honest and not given 



THE DARK AGES 59 

to plundering raids. In eating and drinking they used dishes and 
platters, and when they met together they observed the etiquette of 
the table. They were wont to be severe in their punishments and 
the household of the condemned were always relegated to slavery. 
Robberies were visited with twelvefold amercement. Lewdness 
was punished with the death of both man and woman, and they 
were particularly severe on jealous wives. If the elder brother died, 
the younger married his sister-in-law. Homicides were kept for 
burying alive at funerals, sometimes a whole hundred of them being 
used." l 

From this tribe, after many generations from Tung 
Ming's reign had passed, about the beginning of 
the Christian era, some families moved southwards 
under the leadership of a chief named Kao and settled 
themselves among the valleys and mountains in the 
land which now forms the south-western part of the 
modern Chinese province of Kirin. There they 
founded, in the year 37 B.C., a new nation, to which 
they gave the name of Kao-Kaoli, a combination 
formed of the name of their leader and that of the 
country in the far-away north from which the King 
of Puyu, the ancestor of their own leader, had fled. 
The new State was at first as insignificant in influence 
as it was in the number of its people, and when 
Chosen was governed by China, it was included 
in one of the four military provinces into which 
Chosen was divided for administrative purposes. But 
it quickly grew in strength and aggressiveness, and 
before a century had passed it had become a formid- 
able power which threatened even the safety and 
peace of Liao Tung, while it had also absorbed 
all the country which lay to its east and extended to 
the sea. Its population was rapidly increased by 
refugees from the miseries of anarchy in China, and 
it became a powerful political and military factor 
in the wars which were continually taking place on 

1 Parker, u Race Struggles in Korea." 



60 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the northern frontier of China. During these wars 
Kao-Kaoli steadily pursued its conquering career 
westwards, and, though more slowly, southwards 
across the River Yalu and into the peninsula, and 
before the beginning of the fifth century it was recog- 
nised as a powerful kingdom and a highly valued 
tributary of the empire, extending from the River 
Tatong on the south to the River Liao on its west, 
and comprising all the territory that constituted the 
old Chosen. The prefix was dropped from its 
original name, and it became known simply as 
Kaoli, or to use the pronunciation employed by the 
people themselves, Korai. Before telling its story, 
we must turn aside for a while to describe the 
southern part of the peninsula and its people. 

It has been already told how Kijun, the last of the 
Ki Tse, when driven from his capital by the 
treacherous Wiman, fled to the south. At this time 
the peninsula south of the River Tatong was 
divided into three districts called Han, and distin- 
guished as Ma-han, Ben-han, and Shin-han, the 
inhabitants of the first of which differed in language 
and customs from the other two. Although the latter 
lived together promiscuously, they presented some 
minor differences among themselves, and all three 
differed so fundamentally from the northerns of 
Korai, that it has been assumed that their origin, of 
which nothing definite is known, is to be looked 
for in Southern Asia, whence they migrated to Korea 
by sea, while that of the northerns is, as has been 
seen, looked for among the nomadic tribes of the 
plains of Manchuria. Each district was formed of 
a congery of tribes, those of Ma-han numbering 
fifty-four and the other two twelve each, and not 
even those in the same district were united under any 
one central and predominant authority. Any indica- 
tion as to the geographical limits of each district 



THE DARK AGES 



61 



PUYU / | 




KAOKORAI ( 


CHOs, 


0v y 












< T\ >* — i 




^BENHAN j 








° ^ 




C? -Kf? 



"THE THREE HAN." 



62 THE STORY OF KOREA 

can only be based on pure conjecture, and all that 
can be safely said in this respect is that Ma-han 
was on the west -central coast of the peninsula, 
probably occupying the whole of the province of 
Chhung-Chyong and part of Cholla, Ben-han on the 
south, and Shin-han on the east. It was among 
the Ma-han that Kijun, landing at what is now 
Iksan, took refuge, and he was accompanied by a 
band of followers sufficiently strong to enable him 
to assume authority over all the tribes who had no 
union among themselves and were less vigorous and 
far less civilised than the northern refugees. His 
own reign over them was, however, of short duration, 
he and his son being destroyed by the people, but 
his descendants continued to rule till 16 B.C. 

The civilisation of all three districts was of a lower 
order than that of the people of the north. The 
Ma-han were acquainted, however, with tillage, 
sericulture, and weaving. 

" They lived in mixed settlements and had no cities. They built 
their houses of mud, in shape like a grave-mound, with an opening 
or door at the top. They were not acquainted with the kneeling 
form of obeisance, and drew no distinction of age or sex. They 
did not value gold, jewels, embroidery, or rugs, were ignorant of the 
way to ride oxen or horses, and only esteemed pebbles and pearls as 
ornaments for setting off their garments, and as necklaces and ear- 
drops. The majority had no head-covering beyond their coiled 
chignons, cloth robes, and straw sandals. The people were robust 
and brave, and the young men, when exerting themselves to build 
a house, would take a rope and run it through the skin of the back, 
and trail a huge log by it, amid cheers for their sturdiness. After 
the cultivation was finished in the fifth moon, they always worshipped 
the spiritual powers, and had a drinking bout, day and night, 
assembling in groups to dance and sing, when several dozen men 
would follow each other in keeping time by stamping on the 
ground." l 

1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." 



THE DARK AGES 63 

Settled among the Ma-han tribes, and so assimi- 
lated as to form with them one of the fifty-four 
tribes, was a colony descended from Chinese refugees, 
who had crossed from China at some remote period, 
and who, from the number of their party, which 
their traditions put at ten barons and their followers, 
were called Pekche, or " the hundred crossers," the 
larger number being taken instead of ten to mark 
the fidelity of the followers. It was among this 
particular tribe that Kijun found his home. The 
tribes, both on the east and on the west, in the 
progress of time combined and formed two nations. 
That on the west, formed of the Ma-han, assumed 
the name of Pekche, originally only that of one alien 
settlement among them. The other two Han united 
into one nation, to which they gave the name of 
Shinra. We have now arrived at the formation of 
the three independent kingdoms among which Korea 
was divided during the first six centuries of the 
Christian era : Korai, or Kaoli, on the north, known 
as Koma to the Japanese, founded in 35 B.C., and 
comprising all the north-west of the peninsula and 
a great part of what is now Manchuria ; Pekche, 
called by the Koreans Baiji and by the Japanese 
Kudara, occupying all the west as far north as the 
River Tatong, tracing its foundation back to the year 
16 B.C. ; and Shinra, subsequently euphonised into 
Silla, called by the Japanese Shiragi, occupying the 
whole of the east coast as far north as the Korai 
boundary, the precise location of which is impos- 
sible to fix, and dating its foundation as a united State 
from the year 57 B.C. In the south of the peninsula, 
a few tribes managed to preserve their independence 
against both Pekche and Silla for a few centuries, 
and to form a confederacy which they called the 
kingdom of Karak. It was originally not inferior 
in the extent of its dominions to Silla, but as time 



64 THE STORY OF KOREA 

went on it was gradually absorbed by the latter, 
the last part of it to survive being the State known 
to the Japanese as Imna or Mimana, which even- 
tually became what might not be improperly termed 
a Japanese protectorate or residency, and was men- 
tioned by the Japanese historians as a " Miyake " or 
V State granary." It lay as a blunt wedge on the 
south coast between the southern parts of Silla and 
Pekche. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE STORY OF THE THREE KINGDOMS 

For the first six hundred years of the Christian era the 
history of Korea is the history of the three kingdoms, 
and for four hundred years more it is that of Silla, 
which survived the other two and became virtually 
the first unifier of the peninsula. The story is one, 
on the one side of constant wars, either between the 
kingdoms themselves or with China, or again to a 
minor degree with Japan, and on the other side 
of material progress which culminated, under the 
influence of China and of Buddhism, in so high a 
degree of civilisation that it enabled Korea in her 
turn to become the civiliser of Japan and the 
initiator in that empire of a campaign of missionary 
propagandism which is perhaps the most successful 
that the world has ever seen, its harvest consisting, 
not of individual converts, however numerous, the 
highest reward of their labours that has been won 
by the greatest Christian missionaries, but of a whole 
nation from its Sovereign downwards. 

The history of the three kingdoms is told at length 
and with full details in Mr. Hulbert's " History of 
Korea," and it teems with interesting and romantic 
incidents which well bear attentive reading ; but the 
limits of our space forbid us to include in our story 
more than its briefest outlines, and even these we 
shall confine mainly to; their foreign relations with 
China on the one side and Japan on the other, 

5 65 



66 THE STORY OF KOREA 

referring our readers who desire to follow or to learn 
the internal affairs, the stories of individuals whose 
names have been preserved by Chinese and Korean 
historians and romancists, to Mr. Hulbert's graphic 
and scholarly pages. 1 Each kingdom had a long 
line of kings of varying characters and fortunes, 
who worked weal or woe to their countries, some of 
whom fell beneath assassin's knives, while others, 
deposed or defeated, died by their own hands ; some 
leaving behind them the memories of strong and 
efficient government, which brought nothing but good 
to their subjects ; others those of merciless tyrants, 
sunk in debauchery and cruelty, whose memories 
are akin to those of Nero and Caligula. Each had 
its episodes of national triumph and reverse, its 
incidents of heroic fortitude and craven submission, 
amidst which all steadily progressed on the paths 
of learning, art, and industry ; each received its 
teachers and missionaries from China, and gave 
refuge to immigrants who came thence in thousands 
as fugitives, and gladly absorbed them in the ranks 
of its own population ; each preserved throughout 
its history the characteristics that had marked its 
origin. 

Each contributed in its turn to the stream of emi- 
grants that poured from the peninsula into Japan, 
bringing with them all that they themselves had learnt 
from China, and assisted in laying the foundations of 
the systems of religion, statecraft and literature, 
science, and social life which formed the civilisation 
of Japan for more than twelve hundred years, and 
was only replaced in the latter half of the nineteenth 
century by the higher civilisation of Europe. 

Korai was always warlike, always on the watch for 

1 The material in this chapter is to a considerable degree founded 
on Dr. Aston's translation of the " Nihongi," Mr. Parker's " Race 
Struggles in Korea/' and the Rev. John Ross's " History of Korea." 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 67 




THE THREE KINGDOMS 



68 THE STORY OF KOREA 

opportunities to display, its arms either against China 
or its neighbours in the peninsula, its people retaining 
to the last the fighting spirit of their savage ancestors 
in Manchuria. All its story is closely associated with 
that of China. For over five hundred years from the 
beginning of the Christian era the whole of China 
was plunged in anarchy. Civil war between rival 
emperors, of whom there were never less than three 
at one time (and at one period there were no less 
than seventeen), never ended, and it was not until 
the year 587 that the Emperor Swi succeeded in 
bringing all the empire benqath the sway of his 
own throne. Korai grew into a formidable power, 
largely at China's cost, taking advantage of the dis- 
orders on the northern frontier of the empire and of 
its internal anarchy to absorb in her own territories 
districts that had long acknowledged China's 
suzerainty, and increasing her own population by 
throwing open the country as an asylum for Chinese 
refugees who fled to escape the miseries and dangers 
from which they were never free in the civil wars 
of their own lands. When she had made herself 
recognised as a strong military factor she was in 
turns courted as an ally by the rival dynasties who 
contended for the Imperial throne, or her punish- 
ment attempted by the successful aspirants for that 
dignity whom she had opposed or before whom 
she refused to bow in their hours of triumph. 

Her greatest struggle with China began at the 
close of the sixth century. It was then that the 
Tsin was replaced by the Swi dynasty of emperors 
on the Chinese throne, and Korai, which had been 
on friendly terms with the old, was naturally not very 
prompt in recognising the new dynasty, or in respond- 
ing to the friendly overtures made by it, while her 
southern rivals, on the other hand, were as urgent as 
she was the reverse in conciliating the goodwill of 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 69 

the new occupants of the Dragon throne. Silla had 
now grown greatly in influence and strength. She 
had conquered part of the Pekche territories, and 
had absorbed all of the old kingdom of Karak, and 
while still devoting herself mainly to internal affairs 
and industrial progress, had not neglected the 
development of her military strength. She had also 
made Korea's first essays in the construction of a 
navy, which had been already tested against Japanese 
pirates. Pekche, though shorn of much of her old 
territory by both Korai and Silla, had shown her 
military prowess by repelling a Chinese army which 
had landed on her shores to enforce the payment of 
tribute. Neither, nor both together, were a match 
for their northern neighbour, to which, throughout 
all its history, fighting had been second nature, and 
both eagerly stimulated the ill-will of the Chinese 
Emperor against it, and proffered th^ir alliance in 
whatever operations he might undertake to vindicate 
his offended dignity. Both fondly hoped that the 
time had come in which they would be relieved for 
ever from their old enemy. 

Korai knew of the plot that was formed against 
her, and anticipated an invasion of her own territories 
by dispatching an expedition of 10,000 men across 
the River Liao, which, after having spread devasta- 
tion throughout what is now the province of Chi-li 
as far as the Great Wall, retreated to its own country 
in safety. The Emperor, undisputed master of all 
China, saw in this buccaneering expedition only a 
valid excuse for the conquest and annexation of 
Korai ; and, never doubting that the little mountain 
Power would fall at once before the might of China, 
he sent an army of 300,000 men to the northern 
frontier and simultaneously a powerful fleet to the 
River Tatong, on which was the Koraian capital, 
Phyong ^An, thus following the strategy of six 



70 THE STORY OF KOREA 

hundred years previously. But both expeditions met 
with disaster, and the Koraians were scarcely called 
upon to fight in their own defence. Storms at sea 
broke up and destroyed the naval force beforfe it 
had even reached the shores of Korea. That sent by 
land was equally unfortunate, though its misfortunes 
were due more to the want of ordinary foresight 
than to Nature. It was at the height of the hot 
summer that the army reached the River Liao, the 
frontier of Korai. The heavy summer rains were at 
their worst and rendered the roads impassable for 
the provision-carts, and the army was so ill- 
provisioned and equipped that it perished of disease 
and hunger almost before it even saw a Koraian 
enemy. The Emperor accepted his defeat — it was 
in the year 598 — for the time, but it was only that 
he might make preparations which would secure an 
ample revenge in the future. 

Before the opportunity came he died, but the 
legacy of revenge was readily accepted by his suc- 
cessor, the great Emperor Yang, one of the boldest 
and ablest emperors, but at the same time one of 
the cruellest and most tyrannical, who has sat on the 
throne of China. His councillors and people had no 
sympathy in his designs of conquest, for, though 
there was peace, there was great distress within the 
Empire, which had not yet recovered from the desola- 
tion of the civil wars and was now suffering from 
famine ; and the costly preparations for the great 
expedition that the Emperor meditated were a burden 
greater than could be borne, necessitating as they 
did, among other things, the taking away of jthe 
little food the people had to fill the military granaries. 
But the determined Emperor silenced the opposition 
by a proclamation in which it was plainly declared, 
in very few words, that whosoever presumed to criti- 
cise or oppose his intentions should do so at the 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 71 

expense of his head. In 611 all the preparations 
were completed. Then an invading force started on 
its way to Korai, the magnitude of which was such 
that it has been compared to that of Xerxes. It 
consisted of twenty-four divisions, and its numbers 
exceeded 1,100,000 men. When on its march it 
extended in an unbroken line for over 320 miles, 
and it took forty days to pass any given point pn 
the road. 1 At the same time, according to the old 
precedent, a naval force was dispatched to the River 
Tatong to attack Phyong An in the rear. It was 
little less imposing in its magnitude than the army. 
The ships covered the whole sea between the coasts 
of Korea and Shantung. The army had been raised 
in and at the expense of North China. The burthen 
of the navy was thrown on the south, where the 
suffering caused by its preparation was scarcely less 
than in the north. But nothing stood in the way of 
the iron will of the Emperor. 

In nowise daunted, the Koraians bravely awaited 
their invaders on the left bank of the River Liao. 
Three bridges were thrown across the river by the 
Chinese engineers, but they fell short by 10 feet of 
the opposite bank ; and when the soldiers, who had 
crowded on to the unfinished bridge, tried to leap 
from its end to the east bank or to wade or swim 
through the swift current, they were drowned in 
thousands or cut down as they endeavoured to fight 
their way to the steep bank. It took two days to 
remedy the first error, but when the bridge once 
touched the bank overwhelming numbers drove the 
Koraians before them in headlong rout, more than 
10,000 being left dead on the field before the sur- 
vivors found sanctuary behind the walls of the city of 
Liao Yang. At Phyong An the defenders were more 
fortunate. When the Chinese landed from the fleet, 
1 Ross, " History of Korea," p. 134. 



72 THE STORY OF KOREA 

they at first gained a victory over the army they 
found on their front, but, pursuing the retreating 
enemy too recklessly, they fell into an ambush on 
both sides and were driven back, with great loss, 
to their ships. They were still too strong, notwith- 
standing all they had lost, to justify the Koraians in 
following up their victory by an attack on the ships, 
but the heart of the invaders was gone ; they did not 
even co-operate with the Northern army when it 
afterwards invested the city. The Koraians beaten 
at the banks of the Liao were different men when 
behind the lofty walls of their city of Liao Yang, 
and all the efforts of the Chinese to take the city 
were repulsed. Its siege lasted for several months ; 
and as there was no sign of yielding on the part of 
the garrison, the main portion of the great army 
continued its march, leaving a sufficient force behind 
to continue the investment. 

It was in early spring that the expedition started 
on its way from China ; it was not until autumn that 
it reached the banks of the Yalu. Thence a division 
of 305,000 men made a forced march to Phyong An, 
the Koraians retreating before it as it advanced, and 
at last was in striking distance of the city ; but it 
was exhausted by its rapid march and was short of 
provisions. Before it started, rations for one hundred 
days had been issued to each man, to be carried by 
himself, and warning was given that any one found 
throwing away his rations would be beheaded. But, 
even with this penalty before them in case of di3- 
covery, the weight of such a burthen in a forced 
march proved too great a temptation to the men, and 
their stores were wellnigh exhausted long before they 
reached Phyong An. The commander was therefore 
not very anxious to begin an assault on a city, 
strongly fortified, which from old experience he knew 
would be vigorously met by the enemy fighting 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 73 

behind their walls ; and he readily listened to and 
accepted an offer of submission that was tendered to 
him by the Koraian General, which, though the city 
remained intact, would, he thought, save his face 
before the Emperor. But the submission was only 
feigned. The moment the Chinese commenced their 
return march they were attacked by skirmishers who 
appeared everywhere at once, on both flanks and on 
their rear ; and when half the retreating army had 
crossed the River Chin Chin, ten miles to the north 
of Phyong An, the Koraians' main army, en masse, 
fell on and almost annihilated the other half that 
was still on the southern bank. The retreat then 
degenerated into a panic -struck rout, the pursuers 
slaughtering the broken and starving fugitives 
throughout the whole length ; and of the great dis- 
ciplined army of 305,000 men who had originally 
crossed the Yalu, less than 3,000 survived to recross 
it and at last find safety with the army on the 
northern bank. 

This was still strong enough to have carried out 
a second invasion, but winter was now drawing near 
and the Chinese were ill-provided with the require- 
ments of a winter campaign ; so a general retreat 
was ordered, and the great army withdrew across the 
River Liao, there to await the following spring. Next 
year the ambition of the Emperor was limited to the 
conquest of Liaotung, but while he was engaged in 
it news came to him of a serious rebellion in his own 
dominions, and his army could no longer be spared 
for foreign conquest. The chief incident of the 
second campaign was the renewal of the siege of 
the city of Liaotung. It was valiantly defended by 
the Koraians — every device that engineering skill 
could suggest, scaling ladders and high towers, 
pushed to the walls on wheels, " cloud ladders and 
flying towers," were tried, but the obstinacy and 



74 THE STORY OF KOREA 

valour of the Koraians were proof against all, and the 
city was still safe in their hands when the retreat 
began. The siege was directed by the Emperor in 
person : 

" He had just completed an earthen rampart, sixty paces wide, 
close to and flush with the city wall, and a high-storied movable 
tower on eight wheels, higher than the city walls, whence missiles 
could be thrown down into the city, and these were about to be put 
in action, when a breathless messenger hurried into the camp at 
night and brought the news of a rebellion which threatened the Swi 
capital with a large volunteer army." x 

The Emperor ordered an immediate retreat, 
abandoning his camp as it stood ; and the retreat 
was so well carried out that three days passed before 
the Koraians discovered that the siege was over. 
Famine and rebellions in China prevented any 
resumption of hostilities on her part, and four years 
later the Swi dynasty fell and Korai was able to 
make peace with the new Tang dynasty, to which she 
gave her allegiance and returned all the surviving 
captives of the war. 

The Imperial dynasty of the Tangs, one of the 
few dynasties that, in the early years of history, 
ruled the whole Chinese Empire and held their 
dominions in a firm grasp, began to reign in the early 
part of the seventh century, and as the fruitless 
and costly invasions of Korai had contributed much to 
the downfall of their predecessors, the policy of the 
new Emperor was naturally devoted to Korean 
affairs, with the aim of weakening the northern king- 
dom, which, comparatively insignificant as it was, 
had shown itself throughout its history a most 
truculent vassal and an aggressive neighbour of its 
suzerain. The relations between the great Empire 
and the little kingdom, peopled by hardy moun- 

1 Ross, " History of Korea," p. 141. 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 75 

taineers; full of the spirit of independence and of 
the pride of arms, resembled those between the 
Austrian Empire and Switzerland in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, or between the Spanish 
Kingdom and England at a later period. It seemed 
as if the great Colossus had only to stretch out its 
hand to crush the pigmy which was constantly in- 
flicting irritating pin-pricks in its huge body, but 
each time it had done so it had found that the pigmy, 
by its energy and courage, aided by its natural 
defences, was well able to hold its own. The 
southern kingdom of Silla, devoted principally, as 
it had always been, to industrial progress, had now 
become a military power, sufficiently strong to 
deserve consideration as an ally, and the new 
Emperor of China, as ambitious but more prudent 
than his predecessors, laid himself out to strengthen 
Silla, to aid her in the conquest and annexation of 
the other southern kingdom of Pekche, so that in the 
end the whole strength of Southern Korea might be 
available for attacking Korai on the south while 
China herself assailed it on the north. Silla, on her 
side, used all the arts of diplomacy, in which she was 
well skilled, to flatter the pride of the Emperor and 
to conciliate his goodwill. She adopted the Chinese 
calendar, the greatest proof she could give, accord- 
ing to Oriental ideas, of her recognition of her 
suzerain, and the Chinese Court dress. The religion 
and literature of China she had already adopted, and 
her practice and study of both now became more 
eager than before, while her embassies to the Imperial 
Court were more frequent and the tribute they carried 
costly. 

At this period one of the most prominent ,of the 
heroes of Old Korea appeared on the scenes. In the 
year 637 Hoh Su Wen, a Koraian soldier, murdered 
the reigning king with his own hand, and having 



76 THE STORY OF KOREA 

placed the nephew of the dead monarch on the throne, 
became himself the de facto ruler of the kingdom. 
He was a man of keen ability, and, in addition, a 
combination not very common in the East or else- 
where, of immense physical strength and great 
personal stature. He emphasised his natural personal 
attractions by wearing the finest armour and apparel, 
and so great was the impression made by him on 
his own soldiers " that they hardly dared to look 
up into his face." l Ostensibly to recover some out- 
lying districts which were claimed by Korai, but had 
been seized and were in possession of Silla, but 
more probably to divert the attention of his own 
people from internal affairs and his own crimes and 
tyrannical usurpation of the executive, Hoh Su Wen 
declared war and invaded Silla, and when ordered 
by his suzerain to desist sent a contemptuous refusal. 
Such a defiance of the Emperor's dignity could not 
be overlooked. Once more a great army started on 
its way to invade Korai, nominally only with the 
object of punishing the murderer of the Emperor's 
vassal king, without any desire to injure either the 
people or the kingdom. The bitter experience of 
the former campaign had taught the Chinese a lesson 
which was not forgotten on this occasion, and caution 
guided every step of the invading army's advance. 
All Liaotung was overrun and its cities taken by 
storm, and the Chinese advanced on their way to the 
capital, Phyong An, without having met with one 
reverse, until they arrived before the city of Anchiu, 
only forty miles north of the capital. 

Here the Koraians made their last stand. At first, 
deceived by the generalship of the Chinese, who, it 
is said, were headed by their own Emperor, by whom 

1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." According to Mr. Ross, Hoh 
Su Wen was distinguished by " his great size, ugly face, terrible 
manner, enormous strength, and a magic sword." 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 77 

the plans of the battle were made, they ventured on 
a sortie in mass, but the whole force was surrounded 
and cut off from the city, and more than 20,000 fell. 
The survivors, who fought their way back or had 
remained to garrison the city walls, undaunted by 
this reverse, still bade defiance to the victorious be- 
siegers, and held so obstinately to their fortress that 
the Chinese were, in the end, forced by the approach 
of winter and the increasing lack of provisions to 
abandon the siege and withdraw to their own country. 
This time their retreat was not harassed. The 
Koraians had suffered too severely to be able to 
conduct a vigorous pursuit, and were glad enough 
to see the backs of their foes as they started on their 
long march homewards ; but the privations of cold 
and hunger exacted their usual toll from the retreat- 
ing army. The Emperor was not wanting in chivalry 
to his enemies. Foiled though he had been, and 
deeply chagrined as he must have felt on seeing all 
his prudence and generalship rendered fruitless when 
in the very last stage of the road that led to triumph, 
he sent, at the beginning of his retreat, a present of 
one hundred pieces of silk to the commander of the 
Koraian fortress and a letter complimenting him on 
the gallantry of his defence. 

Some years passed away, during which the 
Emperor died and Korai, still governed by her 
arrogant usurper, was left in peace as far as China 
was concerned. But the old grudge against Silla 
was not forgotten by Korai, and she succeeded in 
drawing Pekche into her quarrel and both declared 
war against Silla. Silla had been not less observant 
of her duties as vassal to the new Emperor than 
she was to his predecessor and was now to reap 
her reward. Her prayer for help was at once 
answered and Korai was again invaded, and as all her 
strength was required to defend her own territories 



78 THE STORY OF KOREA 

against China on the north, Silla was left free to 
do with Pekche as she could. The issue was not 
long in doubt. Pekche was governed by an in- 
capable King, who knew neither how to govern or 
lead himself nor to choose ministers or generals who 
could do so for him and who was guided in all 
he did principally by professional sorcerers and 
diviners, a class which has exercised immense influ- 
ence in Korea from her earliest days and continued 
to do so in the present generation of the twentieth 
century. The advice of the sorcerers and diviners 
conflicted with that of the most capable generals, 
but it was adopted in preference to theirs and the 
natural result followed. The Sillan army had an 
easy march into Pekche, and simultaneously with its 
advance from the east, a Chinese force was landed 
on the western shore. The capital fell almost with- 
out resistance before the allied armies ; the King fled 
from it but was soon taken, and he, with all his 
family and an immense number of his subjects, were 
sent as prisoners to China. A story is told by Mr. 
Hulbert, incidental to the fall of the capital, which 
is only one of the many interesting incidents that 
crowd the pages of his exhaustive history, but which 
are necessarily excluded by the limits of space from 
our own story, the pathos of which is such that we 
make an exception to the rule we have prescribed 
for ourselves and quote it in full as it is told by 
Mr. Hulbert. It is as brief as it is pathetic. 

" When the Silla army approached the capital, the King fled to the 
town now known as Kong-Ju. He left all the palace women behind 
him, and they, knowing what their fate would be at the hands of the 
Silla soldiery, went together to a beetling precipice which overhangs 
the harbour of Ta Wang and cast themselves from the summit into 
the water beneath. That precipice is famed in Korean song and 
story and is called by the exquisitely poetic name Nak-whaam, or 
the " Precipice of the Falling Flowers." 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 79 

Pekche now lost its independent existence as a 
kingdom, and was incorporated as a prefecture in 
the Chinese Empire and placed under Chinese 
'governors. But it was not quite dead yet. Some 
of the beaten soldiers continued to maintain a guerilla 
warfare in the mountain fastnesses to which they had 
fled on the fall of their King and capital, and were 
a continued source of trouble both to the Chinese 
governors and to the Sillan armies who were ex- 
pected by the Emperor to support him. This con- 
tinued for three years (it was in 660 that the capital 
was taken), and then a more serious attempt was 
made to recover the national independence, and this 
time Pekche had the assistance of what should have 
been a powerful and efficient ally. We have not 
hitherto referred in this chapter to Japanese rela- 
tions with Korea, especially with the two southern 
kingdoms, as they were so frequent and intimate and 
productive of such influence on the future histories 
both of Korea and Japan that they merit a chapter 
to themselves. We shall here only anticipate what 
shall be said at length hereafter — that Japan's rela- 
tions with Pekche were on a more intimate scale 
than with Silla, and that they had been almost 
invariably those of friendship and alliance. Princes 
of the royal house of Pekche frequently visited the 
Court of the Mikado, and a son of the last King 
was actually at the Court when his father fell. 

In 663 a warrior priest of Pekche raised the 
standard of rebellion against the Chinese Governor 
of his native land, and at the same time sent to 
.Japan to pray for help and for the return of the 
prince to be crowned as king. Both prayers Avere 
answered. A large Japanese force escorted the young 
prince and was prepared to associate with the Pekche 
patriots in their effort to shake themselves free both 
of China and Silla. At this time both the Chinese 



80 THE STORY OF KOREA 



and Sillan troops were engaged in operations on 
the southern borders of their common enemy, Korai ; 
but when news reached them of the new outbreak 
both promptly turned southwards and marched with 
such speed and at the same time covered their move- 
ments so well that they took both the Pekche army 
and the newly landed Japanese by utter surprise. 
The Japanese suffered one of the few overwhelming 
disasters that history records outside their own 
borders. Their soldiers were slaughtered as they 
stood or driven into the sea to be drowned or slain 
by arrows shot from the shore, and their ships and 
almost the whole of the great expedition utterly 
destroyed, its ruin being hardly less complete than 
that which the Japanese in their turn inflicted on their 
Mongol invaders six hundred years later. 1 

This was Pekche's last despairing effort. It had 
already ceased to exist in name. Its people who 
were not dead or prisoners in China emigrated in 
hundreds to Japan, where they were adopted as sub- 
jects by the Mikado, and founded colonies whose 
descendants exist in Japan to this day. Only the 
tillers of the soil were left, and both land and people 
were ere long, when China found the retention of 
any dominion in Southern Korea was more trouble 
than it was worth, incorporated in Silla. Pekche was 
founded in 16 B.C. Its final fall at the end of its 
last struggle took place in 663 A.D., and it had 
therefore an independent existence as a kingdom ex- 
tending over 679 years. It had made great progress 
in all the elements of material civilisation, and of 
the three kingdoms, as will be seen later on, it 
was the one to whom Japan owed most for all she 
learned from Korea. The Koraians were principally 
soldiers, the Sillans cultivators of art and industry ; 
the people of Pekche united the best qualities of both, 

1 The defeat according to the " Nihongi " was not so complete. 






STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 81 

and, though not the equal of either in their own 
spheres, became efficient soldiers and skilful artificers. 
If in nothing else their name lives in Eastern history 
as the early civilisers and proselytisers of Japan. 

Korai did not long continue to exist as an inde- 
pendent kingdom after the fall of Pekche. The great 
usurper Hoh Su Wen had, throughout all her san- 
guinary wars with China, been the mainstay of her 
military organisation, and the brave resistance which 
she had made to what appeared to be overwhelming 
armies, that had only to strike to overcome an in- 
significant border kingdom, was mainly owing to the 
genius with which he utilised her resources and the 
spirit which the example of his valour infused into 
every man in the ranks of her army. He died four 
years after the fall of Pekche, and with him, murderer 
and tyrant as he was, departed, not only the guiding 
intellect, the bravest soldier of the kingdom, but 
the unity which had hitherto enabled its people to 
present a solid front to whatever foe threatened them. 

He left two sons, both as ambitious as himself. 
They quarrelled for the succession to his dignities, 
and the defeated one crossed over to his country's 
enemies, bringing with him a section, not only of 
his own countrymen but the border tribes on the 
northern frontiers of both China and Korai, who had 
hitherto thrown in their lot with the latter. Silla, 
relieved from all apprehension on her western frontier 
by the downfall of Pekche, was now free to throw 
her whole strength against Korai from the south 
and China again invaded it from the north. With 
discord among her own people, without her leader 
who had hitherto guided her to victory, and attacked 
at once on both sides, she still made a brave resist- 
ance, worthy of her old fame. She was first driven 
by the Chinese from all her territory beyond the 
Yalu, and while the Sillan army advanced on the 

6 



82 THE STORY OF KOREA 

capital, Phyong An, from the south, the Chinese, once 
across the Yalu, the passage of which was so 
keenly contested that over 30,000 Koraians were 
said to have been killed, had an easy march to 
the same goal. Before both, the city fell after a 
siege which lasted a month. An old prophecy fore- 
told the doom of Korai : " When the first King 
established the kingdom, he wished his government 
to last for a thousand years. His mother said : ' If 
thou governest the country well thou mayst accom- 
plish this. However, it will last for just seven 
hundred years.' " x Another version of the prophecy 
contains the addition that 80 would be the cause 
of its downfall. Her existence lasted for 705 years, 
from 27 B - c - to 668 A.D., and the Chinese 
general who commanded the final invading army 
was eighty years old. Warning omens had been 
seen in the capital itself. Korea is outside the 
earthquake belt, and earthquakes are as rare in 
it as in England, but now earthquakes were felt 
and foxes were seen running in the streets. Such 
portents must have contributed their quota to the 
failing hearts of the superstitious people who were 
fighting their last battle of despair. 

One last gallant sortie was made in vain from the 
beleaguered city. Then the son of the great Hoh 
Su Wen, whose elevation to his father's dignity had 
cost his country so dearly, committed suicide rather 
than fall into the hands of his brother, who was with 
the invaders, from whom he could expect no mercy, 
and not another blow was struck. The city was taken, 
the King and his family and a large number of the 
soldiers and people were brought as captives to China, 
another large number being at the same time taken 
to Silla. Others fled to Silla of their own will, and 
preferring the rule of their neighbours in the penin- 
1 "Nihongi," vol. ii. p. 289. 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 83 

sula, even though they had been enemies, to that of 
alien Chinese, became Sillan subjects and stout 
recruits to the Sillan army. The old kingdom, from 
the Liao to the Tatong, with a population of 695,000 
households, was incorporated as a military pre- 
fecture in the Empire. Throughout all its existence 
it had been almost constantly at war either with China 
or with its southern neighbours of the peninsula, 
and war was the chief occupation of its people. Their 
civilisation, though older, was therefore, of necessity, 
of a lower order than that of either Pekche or Silla, 
which were favoured with milder climates and more 
generously productive soils. But Buddhism early 
found its way to Korai ; and in its train came, as 
they did in a greater degree, not only into the two 
other Korean kingdoms but into Japan, learning, art, 
science, and technical industry. Korai was celebrated 
for " its graceful willow-leaf fans," and for its guitars 
made from beech and snake skin with ivory keys, 1 and 
for its talented musicians, as well as for its warriors 
and beautiful women. To this day the inhabitants 
of Northern Korea furnish the stoutest and bravest 
soldiers, those who, when behind their fortress walls, 
only a generation ago faced the French and American 
bluejackets and marines as bravely as their ancestors 
did the invading hordes of China, and though armed 
only with flintlocks never quailed for a moment under 
a rain of fire from the most modern artillery and 
rifles. And Fhyong An has always furnished from 
its daughters the most beautiful of the Gesang that 
enlivened the Royal Court at Seoul. 

Many years did not elapse before complications 
arose between the two Powers, the Empire and Silla, 
which were responsible for the destruction of Korai. 
Silla had now nothing more to fear in the peninsula. 
Her population was largely reinforced by fugitives 

1 Parker, " Race Struggles in Korea." 



84 THE STORY OF KOREA 

from both Pekche and Korai. Her experience in the 
wars which she had waged in alliance with China had 
taught her military science, and she had many of 
the old Koraian soldiers in her ranks, infusing their 
spirit into the less hardy or courageous Sillans. She 
was dissatisfied with her share of the spoil on the 
downfall of Korai, and ventured to try the conclusion 
of arms with her great suzerain and former ally. 
She was beaten, and forced to sue humbly for for- 
giveness, but the internal affairs of his own dominions 
caused the Emperor of China to take less and less 
interest in those of Korea, and his dignity having 
been satisfied with the humiliations and apologies 
of Silla, he left Korea entirely to her arbitrament. 
She gradually succeeded in extending her sway over 
the whole peninsula as far north as the River Tatong. 
For the next three hundred years the story of the 
peninsula is that of the progress of Silla in all the 
refinements of civilisation ; but along with that, in 
the latter part of this period, went the decline in 
military efficiency that is always the sure accompani- 
ment of luxury and security, while contests for the 
throne and rebellion became not uncommon incidents 
within her borders. At the capital, Kyun Ju, there 
was splendour, the evidence of which remained till 
the city was destroyed by Hideyoshi's vandals in 
1594; but the provinces were neglected and fell 
into decay, suffering heavily in the frequent uprisings 
that took place against the central Government. 

Silla was unique among the three kingdoms, ,in 
that, during her history, she was on three occasions 
ruled by a Queen, the last of whom occupied the 
throne from the year 888 to 898. The morals of 
this Queen were on a par with those of Katherine of 
Russia, and under her corrupt Court, whose promi- 
nent features were licence and dissipation, the con- 
dition of the nation fell lower and lower, and 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 85 

presaged only too truly its ultimate fall. The Ta;ng 
dynasty was at the same time drawing to its close in 
China, and it is possible that the movement which 
culminated in its overthrow may have had its influence 
in initiating a similar movement against the royal 
family of Silla. Be that as it may, among the many 
rebels or adventurers who appeared during the last 
Queen's reign there was one named Kung I, the son 
of one of the Queen's predecessors on the throne by 
a concubine, whose early life was passed as a priest 
in a Buddhist monastery, but to whom, when he 
grew to manhood, a life of military adventure proved 
more attractive than the safe monotony of the priest- 
hood. Gathering round him a large force of soldier 
bandits, he easily overran the north of the peninsula 
beyond the River Tatong, which was outside the 
Sillan jurisdiction ; and as his fame spread, as 
success followed his arms, so did his fighting strength 
increase. He extended his operations to Kang Won 
and Kyong Kwi, the central provinces of Silla, and 
finally, intoxicated with his own success, he pro- 
claimed himself King of the territory which was occu- 
pied by his troops, and the weak, debauched, #nd 
corrupt Government of Silla was helpless to prevent 
him. Kung I was, however, not the sole author of 
his own great fortune. Much of what he had 
achieved was due to the services and merits of Wang 
Kien, the youngest of his generals. Wang Kien was 
descended from the old royal house of Korai. He 
was born in the year 878, and when he first rose to 
fame as the greatest of Kung I's lieutenants he was 
only twenty years of age. His future greatness was 
predicted even before his birth : — 

11 The night the boy was born luminous clouds stood above the 
house and made it as bright as day. The child had a very high 
forehead and a square chin and he developed rapidly. His birth 
had been long prophesied by a monk, who told his father, as he was 



86 THE STORY OF KOREA 

building his house, that within its walls a great man would be born. 
As the monk turned to go the father called him back and received 
from him a letter which he was ordered to give to the yet unborn 
child when he should be old enough to read. The contents are 
unknown, but when the boy reached his seventeenth year the same 
monk reappeared and became his tutor, instructing him especially 
in the art of war. He showed him also how to obtain aid from the 
heavenly powers, how to sacrifice to the spirit of the mountains and 
streams so as to propitiate them." * 

The monk's prophecies were amply fulfilled. The 
youth threw in his lot with the adventurer Kung I, 
and quickly rose to be his most trusted lieutenant. 
It was under him that the provinces of Kang Won 
and Kyong Kwi were conquered, and he afterwards 
carried his arms in triumph into the south-western 
province of Cholla, where he had to overcome, not 
the royal army of Silla, which was now reduced to 
a state of hopeless impotency, but a southern rebel, 
Kyun Wun, who was in arms against both Silla 
and Kung I, and whose ambition was to win for 
himself the crown of Silla. 

While the young lieutenant was thus winning glory 
for himself in the field, and becoming the idol iof 
the soldiers and the rising hope of the people, dis- 
gusted with a Court that was yearly abandoning 
itself more and more to idleness and debauchery, a 
change had come over his first master. The ex- 
Buddhist priest had reverted to his old calling, not 
however, in the humble role of a priest. He had pre- 
viously proclaimed himself a king. He now went 
farther, and in the fervency of religion proclaimed 
himself the Buddhist Messiah, and exacted from all 
around him the devotion that was due to a god. 
Those who failed in their obeisance were put to 
death, and among those who suffered were his wife, 
whom he murdered with his own hand in a manner 

1 Hulbert's " History of Korea," vol. i. p. 129. 




z 

D 

£ 






O 



o 



STORY OF THREE KINGDOMS 87 

too horrible to be described, and his two sons. As 
the popularity of the young general grew, so did 
the hatred and horror with which the self-made King 
was regarded. At last the troops mutinied and killed 
him, and proclaimed Wang Kien King in his stead — 
King, that is, of the district of Central and Northern 
Korea, which had formed the dominions of the dead 
tyrant during his brief period of assumed royalty. 

Silla still continued to drag on an inglorious 
existence in south-east Korea. In the south-west 
the rebel Kyun Wun, defeated as he had been by 
Wang Kien, was still powerful ; and while the latter 
was engaged in establishing order in his new kingdom 
in the north, in framing a good system of government 
under which the people should be prosperous and 
happy, Kyun Wun made a sudden dash on the capital 
of Silla, and, taking it entirely by surprise, made it 
an easy prey. The King was killed, the Queen 
violated by the rebel leader himself, the palace ladies 
given to the soldiers, and the palace looted. It was 
now a question whether the crowned King of 
Northern Korea or the bloodthirsty rebel of the South 
should become the master of the whole peninsula. 
It was decided in the usual way, but it w#s not till 
after a long and hard-fought campaign that right 
finally triumphed, that Kyun Wun's army was de- 
stroyed, and he surrendered himself as a prisoner of 
war to his northern foe. This was in the year 935. 
In the same year the last King of Silla, the fifty- 
sixth of a line of sovereigns who had ruled over the 
kingdom throughout 992 years, from its foundation 
in 57 B.C., worn and weary with the wrongs and 
sufferings of his house, despairing of restoring its 
fortunes pr of reforming his weak and corrupt 
Government, resigned his crown and handed over all 
his royal prerogatives to Wang Kien, who now 
became the ruler of a united kingdom which foil 



88 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the first time comprised and was limited to the whole 
of the peninsula, bounded on the north by the Rivers 
Tumen and Yalu, and on its other three sides by the 
sea, which remained in its original territorial in- 
tegrity, unimpaired and unenlarged, from his day 
till the year of grace 19 10, in which it was annexed 
by Japain. 

The end of the royal house of Silla, nearly a 
thousand years ago, resembles that of the last of 
the Kings of Korea in our own days. Deprived of 
his royal dignity by the Japanese, he has been 
granted the rank of an Imperial Prince of Japan and 
a revenue ample for his support, and every external 
sign of honour that could appeal to his vanity shown 
to him. But he has been told that he is henceforth 
a subject of the Emperor of Japan, that not a shadow 
remains of the absolute power which he and his fore- 
runners exercised over his people, who are his no 
more. And so it was with the last King of Silla in 
935. Every outward honour that the tact and kind- 
ness of the generous victor could suggest was paid 
to him. His historic capital ceased to exist as such, 
and he was told to take up his residence at Sunto, 
the new capital founded by Wang Kien. He was 
escorted to it by a royal procession which extended 
over ten miles in length. He was met at the gates 
by Wang Kien himself, was endowed with a princely 
revenue, and received his victor's daughter in mar- 
riage. But he had to perform obeisance to him who 
was now his sovereign and to subside into the 
ordinary ranks of the nobility of a new kingdom. 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 

Japan's connection with Korea began, according to 
the story that is told in her own records, in the most 
remote periods of mythology. When Susa-no-o, the 
child of Izanagi and the brother of the Sun Goddess, 
was banished for his misdeeds from heaven and 
descended to earth, " the Nether Land," he is 
believed to have found his new home in the province 
of Izumo on the south-west coast of the main island ; 
but according to one of the traditions quoted in the 
Nihongi, his descent was made, not direct to the 
land of the gods but to that part of Korea which 
afterwards became the kingdom of Silla. He was 
not satisfied with what he found there : 

" So he lifted up his voice and said, ' I will not dwell in this land.' 
He at length took clay and made of it a boat in which he embarked 
and crossed over Eastwards until he arrived by the upper waters of 
the River Hi in Idzumo." 

He brought with him in his descent from heaven 
the seeds of trees in great number, and of the 
eighty kinds of fruits, but it was not until after he 
had settled in Izumo that he first planted them. In 
this myth may possibly be found the notice of the 
first prospector who spied the way for the great 
stream of immigrants which was subsequently to flow 
from Korea and colonise West Japan. 

Long afterwards, in B.C. 33, when what the 



90 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Japanese claim to be the first period of their authentic 
history, though it has been shown by European 
savants to be almost as little worthy of credit as 
their mythology, was more than six centuries old, 
we find another notice of a visitor from Korea. At 
this time the kingdom of Silla was already founded, 
and it had on its south-western borders the tribes 
who were afterwards united into the petty kingdom 
of Kara. It was from these tribes that the visitor 
came, riding in a boat, " a man with horns on his 
forehead.'' He landed in Tsuruga, and said that 
he had come to offer his allegiance to the Emperor 
of Japan. After long wanderings, spread over two 
years, he reached the Court of Yamato, where he 
remained another three years. Then gifts of red 
silk stuffs were bestowed upon him and he was per- 
mitted to return home. 1 

It was in the reign of Sujin (B.C. 97-33), the 
tenth Emperor of Japan, whose native name was 
Mimaki, that the Korean landed. 2 Sujin died during 
his stay, so he was told, when about to leave Japan, 
to make in future the august name of the Emperor 
that of his country. It was always Kara to the 
Koreans, but that part of Korea was thenceforward 
known to all the Japanese as Mimana. He was not 
allowed on his return to retain his gifts of red silk, 
as the neighbouring people of Silla, hearing of them, 
raised an army and, invading Mimana, robbed him of 
them all. Silla, on her part, then entered into com- 
munication with Japan. The King's son crossed over 
the intervening sea in B.C. 27, bringing with him 
offerings of gems, swords, and a sun-mirror, and after 

1 " Nihongi," vol. i. books v. and vi. 

2 The names by which the Japanese emperors are known in his- 
tory are all posthumous. They were first conferred in the eighth 
century of the Christian era. Each Emperor had his own native 
name, but until the present reign it was never in his lifetime uttered. 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 91 

visiting many places settled in Tajima and married 
a lady of the province. 

There is no further mention of Korea in the 
Japanese annals till the reign of the Emperor Chiuai, 
more than two hundred years later, but in the much 
more trustworthy annals of Korea there are records 
both of Japanese descents on the coasts of Silla, 
ancient preludes of the piratical raids that became so 
frequent between the thirteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies, and also of the interchange of friendly com- 
munications between Silla and Japan, which show 
that the existence of the two countries must have 
been well known to each other. 

In the year 200 A.D., when the Emperor Chiuai 
was on the throne of Japan, a rebellion occurred, 
the suppression of which required his presence in 
Kiusiu. While there, his consort, the Empress Jingo, 
in a fit of divine inspiration told him that " a land 
in the west, full of treasures of gold and silver, a 
dazzling land, fair to look upon as a beautiful 
woman," had been bestowed upon him. The 
Emperor refused to credit, not only the gift but even 
the existence of the land, notwithstanding all that 
had been heard of it in previous years, and was 
punished by the gods for his want of faith with 
death. Then his strong-minded, courageous, and 
ambitious widow resolved to undertake the task that 
had been offered to her husband, and conquer " the 
land of riches " for herself and her descendants. 
She was at the time pregnant and therefore not in a 
very fit condition to undertake the organisation of a 
great overseas expedition, but her delivery was 
delayed by the curious obstetric expedient of tying 
a stone in her girdle, and under her directions an 
army was gathered and ships assembled from all 
the provinces. Repeated supernatural omens assured 
her of success, and in the tenth month of the year 



92 THE STORY OF KOREA 

200 A.D. the great expedition sailed on a lucky day 
chosen by divination. 

Supernatural as were the omens that preceded its 
sailing, they were far surpassed by the facts that 
followed. The gods blessed it from the first. They 
sent a gentle spirit to guard the Empress and a rough 
one to lead her army. They sent a favourable wind 
which filled the sails ; the great fishes rose to the 
surface of the sea and bore the ships onward on 
their backs, so that not an oar had to be used. A 
great tidal wave followed, which, though the ships 
rode on it in perfect security, broke on the shores 
of Silla in a deluge that reached far up into the 
interior of the country and filled the inhabitants with 
terror. 

The King of Silla and his people were taken by 
utter surprise. " The banners of the invaders were 
resplendent in the sunlight ; the mountains and rivers 
flowed to the sound of drum and fife, ,, and Silla, 
a nation more devoted to the arts of peace than of 
war, more skilled in the subtleties of diplomacy than 
in the use of military weapons, had nothing to oppose 
to them. Resistance was useless, so the King came 
to meet the Empress, and kneeling down, he bowed 
his head to the ground and promised that until the 
sun rises in the west, until the rivers flow backwards, 
and the river pebbles ascend to heaven and become 
the stars, Sillas will not cease to render homage 
and pay yearly tribute to Japan. His submis- 
sion was accepted by the Empress. Some of her 
suite proposed that the King should be put to death, 
but her orders to the army were : " Slay not the 
submissive," and this principle she loyally followed 
herself, and the King was spared. He had to pay 
dearly for his life. His treasures were seized. 
Eighty vessels were laden with the spoils of gold, 
silver, and silk, that were carried back to Japan ; 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 93 

hostages were taken for the King's good behaviour, 
and the Empress's staff and spear were set up at his 
gate as memorials of his vassalage to after ages. 
It is not difficult to understand the easy conquest 
of an unwarlike kingdom, taken by surprise by 
invaders who were well trained to military efficiency 
by continued fighting in their own country ; but faith 
is sorely tested when we are told that the two re- 
maining kingdoms of Korea, Korai in the far north 
and Pekche in the west, awed by Silla's fate, 
followed her example, and without giving the army 
of the Empress occasion to strike a single blow, 
voluntarily pledged themselves to be for ever the 
vassals of Japan. Silla, on the east coast of the 
peninsula, directly facing Japan, was always exposed 
to attacks from the sea ; Pekche, on the west coast, 
was fairly secure ; while Korai, in the north, was 
totally inaccessible to Japan, unless her soldiers first 
accomplished a long, difficult march through a 
mountainous and hostile country, or her ships made 
a long and perilous voyage through unknown seas. 
Pekche repeatedly proved that her people were not 
destitute of military spirit and capacity, while Korai, 
so far from being a power that was likely to yield 
submissively to the mere threats of a semi-savage 
invader from a distant and unknown land, until her 
fall fought vigorously and successfully throughout 
all her history for her independence against over- 
whelming armies and fleets from China that lay only 
across her own borders, that fronted her on the seas 
just as Japan did Silla. It is unlikely in the extreme 
that either kingdom, in what is historically known to 
have been their condition at the time, would have 
been in the least terrorised or even influenced by the 
downfall of Silla, which both held in contempt as 
a fighting factor. All Japanese, however, to the 
present day hold firmly to the belief that the whole 



94 THE STORY OF KOREA 

of the peninsula of Korea submitted to their great 
Empress, that the three kingdoms bound themselves 
by similar vows, and thenceforth became the vassals 
of Japan, and Jingo's conquest was the remote 
foundation of every claim which Japan has since 
made on Korea down to the present generation. 

The researches and criticism of European savants, 
who are unbiassed by the national vanity and preju- 
dices of the descendants of the invaders, have cast 
a deep shadow of scepticism on the whole of the 
romantic story and leave as much faith in the fact 
of its historical occurrence as they do in the 
miraculous incidents that accompanied it. Dr. Aston, 1 
the most profound of all scholars and investigators 
in both Japanese and Korean history, contemptuously 
dismisses the whole as a myth founded on two very 
distinct historical facts — that there was, at the time 
of the alleged invasion, an Empress of Japan, a 
woman of real determination and ability, and that 
not one but several Japanese invasions of Korea did 
occur, though at later periods, in which the Japanese 
did not invariably meet with the triumphant success 
that they claim for the Empress. 

The annals of early Korea have been shown by Dr. 
Aston to be much more reliable than those of Japan. 
In both cases the chronicles, prior to the introduc- 
tion of the art of writing and learning from China 
— to Korea in the fourth and Japan in the fifth 
century of the Christian era — are founded on oral 
tradition ; but those of Korea not only bear in them- 
selves much more striking evidence of reliability than 
do those of Japan, but in many of the events which 
they record they are confirmed by the undoubtedly 

1 The story of the invasion as just given and the main incidents 
described in this chapter are founded on Dr. Aston' s translation of 
the " Nihongi " and his paper on " Early Japanese History/' in the 
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xvi. 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 95 

authentic contemporaneous records of China, which, 
when they refer to Japan, contradict or put a very 
different complexion on the statements of the 
Japanese historians. The early history of Korea is 
almost free from the miraculous or superhuman 
incidents which crowd that of Japan. Gods and 
goddesses, with all their virtues and vices, are as 
conspicuous by their absence in the one as they are 
by their frequent and active presence in the other. 
The first sovereign, " the founder " of Korea, 1 was 
a very human personage indeed, claiming neither 
divine descent, inspiration, nor guidance. His 
successors were not, like those of Japan, almost in- 
variably centenarians, but lived and reigned only for 
the average periods of the lives and reigns of the 
sovereigns of other countries, of the west as well as 
of the east. Japan was always one empire, and there 
was, therefore, only one series of national records, 
the compilers of which could proceed without fear of 
criticism or rivalry. Korea originally consisted of 
three independent kingdoms, jealous of each other, 
frequently at war. Separate records were kept in 
each kingdom, each forming a check on the other, 
and they all present a reasonable degree of uniformity 
in the great events which are described by the three 
in common. Finally, not only were writing and the 
study of Chinese literature and science introduced 
into Korea nearly half a century prior to the date 
of their introduction into Japan, but centuries prior 
to their introduction a large part of Korea was 
conquered by and became for a long period incor- 
porated in the Chinese Empire. Chinese officials 
governed it, and their scribes kept records of what 
was passing, which were preserved in the Chinese 
Imperial Archives and freely quoted by subsequent 
historians, both Chinese and Korean. All these cir- 
1 Ki-Tse, vide p. 51. 



96 THE STORY OF KOREA 

cumstances combine to invest qarly Korean history 
with a degree of credibility which none but the 
Japanese of the true faith can in the present day 
possibly accord to that of Japan. 

Both Korean and Chinese annals are absolutely 
silent as to the Empress Jingo's invasion, but they 
do record many Japanese incursions in the third, 
fourth, and fifth centuries of the Christian era. In 
233 the invaders were defeated and slaughtered and 
their ships burnt ; in 249, 294, and 364 they were 
again beaten back, each time with heavy loss ; in 
346 and 393 attempts which they made to capture 
Kyun Ju, the capital of Silla, were unsuccessful, 
and during the fifth century no less than twelve 
attacks were made on Silla, in every one of which 
the Japanese had to retreat, almost always with heavy 
loss. Only one of them can be identified with any- 
thing that is mentioned in the Japanese annals. 
They were for the most part, no doubt, mere piratical 
raids on the part of the Kumaso, the savage inhabit- 
ants of Kiusiu, over whom but little controlling 
authority was in those centuries exercised by the 
Court at Yamato, which may, therefore, have been in 
total ignorance of the Kumaso excursions over the 
seas ; but it is evident from the fact that the Sillan 
capital, which lay some miles inland, was the objective 
in several instances, that the invaders must have 
occasionally been in very considerable force. 

It was not until forty-seven years after the great 
invasion that Pekche is again mentioned in the 
Japanese annals, while ninety-seven years elapsed 
before Korai again appears in them. In 247 Pekche 
sent " tribute," not apparently in fulfilment of a 
former pledge, but as an inducement to the founda- 
tion of friendly relations with a people of whose 
existence Pekche had only recently become aware. 
The messengers bearing it were graciously received, 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 97 

but when their offerings were compared with those 
simultaneously brought from Silla, they were found 
to be of very inferior quality, " few and mean and 
of no value, while Silla sent rare objects in very 
great number." Inquiry elicited the disclosure that 
when passing through Silla on their way to Japan, 
the Pekche messengers had been forced, under threat 
of death, to exchange their offerings for those of 
Silla, and that the rare objects were really the tribute 
of Pekche and not of Silla. To the return envoy 
sent by Japan the King of Pekche swore that for 
a thousand autumns and for ten thousand years, 
without pause or limit, his land would bear the 
regular title of the Western Frontier Province, and 
that every spring and autumn the envoys would attend 
the Japanese Court with tribute. The date of this 
oath is given as 249 A.D., but, as has been clearly 
proved by Dr. Aston and other commentators, all 
the early dates in the Nihongi are two cycles 
(120 years) too early. The proper date, assuming 
that the oath was really taken, should therefore be 
369, a time at which not only was there strong 
enmity between Silla and Pekche, but the latter was 
also threatened on the north by Korai. It was, there- 
fore, no doubt anxious to secure the goodwill and 
the help of Japan in the complications that faced it 
in the peninsula, and its efforts were not in vain. 
Throughout all the remaining years of its existence 
as an independent kingdom help was frequently given 
to it by Japan in its gravest crises, and a full return 
was made for this help by the civilising and humanis- 
ing influences for which Japan was in the progress 
of time mainly indebted to Pekche. 

The first great contribution which it made was 
in sending a celebrated teacher of writing named 
Wani, whose arrival in Japan took place in 285 
according to the Nihongi, really in 405. Schools of 

7 



98 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Chinese writing and literature were founded in Pekche 
in 374, and thirty years later the pupils had become 
sufficiently proficient to act as teachers to others. 
Until Wani's arrival, Japan had no system of writing, 
no written records. Then began the studies which 
resulted in the wholesale adoption of all the principles 
of China's advanced system of civilisation, studies 
which to this day are the principal element in the 
education of a Japanese gentleman. Wani was the 
first of a long list of cultured and skilled emigrants 
who poured into Japan through the succeeding cen- 
turies, who, as artistic and industrial specialists of 
high scientific and technical attainments, laid in 
Japan the foundations of her first acquaintance with 
all those arts and industries in which she is prominent 
at the present day. Missionaries followed in the 
track of the lay civilisers, and initiated the most 
triumphant campaign of propagandism 1 that the world 
has ever seen. In 552, Pekche was particularly 
anxious to cultivate the goodwill of Japan. The two 
other kingdoms of the peninsula had formed one of 
their few alliances, and both threatened to overwhelm, 
not only Pekche but the Japanese colony of Mimana. 
Pekche had been saved before by Japan when it 
had fallen against Korai alone, and now, threatened, 
not by one but by both its neighbours, help from 
Japan was once more anxiously desired. 

As an inducement to send it, the King included 
in his tribute what he regarded as his own most 
valued treasures — an image of Buddha, made by the 
sacred hands of Sakyamuni, and some volumes of 
the canonical books. Buddhism had been introduced 
into Pekche in 384, and had become the established 
religion of the kingdom. It now, for the first time, 
made its way into Japan, where it at first made slow 
progress, but before half a century had passed the 
ministrations, eloquence, and learning of the Korean 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 99 

missionaries had such effect that the native gods 
were forgotten and Buddhism had become the 
religion of the whole nation, with devoted adherents in 
every class of life, from the Emperor on the throne 
downwards. Monks and nuns came as mission- 
aries in troops, first from Pekche and at a later 
date also from both Korai and Silla, and with them 
came architects and builders, bell -founders, decora- 
tive artists whose best skill and energy were devoted 
to the glorifying of the religion that was new to 
Japan and to the provision for its services of temples 
worthy of all its divine merits. Civilisation and 
Buddhism went hand in hand through all Japan 
that in those days acknowledged the rule of the 
Emperor in Yamato (the north, it is to be remembered, 
was still held by the savage and unconquered Ainos). 
The original teachers of both were exclusively Korean, 
and many of the architectural and artistic triumphs 
of the early Korean proselytisers are still in existence. 
For its earliest knowledge of music and dancing, 
of astronomy, geography, and calendar-making, and 
of the less creditable arts of magic, invisibility, and 
geomancy, Japan was also indebted to Korea. 

Apart from the Koreans who came to Japan with 
the avowed object of acting as missionaries or 
teachers, there were large bodies who came solely 
as immigrants, seeking, as did the Chinese in Korea 
in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, refuge 
from the miseries of war in their own country and a 
new home in a land where they could hope for peace 
and security. In 666, two thousand emigrants of 
both sexes migrated from Pekche and were settled 
in the eastern provinces, and smaller bodies from 
each of the three kingdoms, coming at various times, 
were similarly provided for, land being granted to 
them in the provinces of Omi, Musashi, Shimotsuke, 
Hitachi, and Kawachi. These were all frontier pro- 



100 THE STORY OF KOREA 

vinces of the dominions of the Emperor, exposed to 
the incursions of the Ainos, and the grants made to the 
Koreans were somewhat on a par with those on the 
Indian frontier made to early settlers in America, 
gifts that would have to be held with the sword. 
But the settlers were generously treated. They were 
provided with the necessaries of life and exempted 
from all taxation for three years, and from forced 
labour for ten years, and those of them who were of 
noble rank in their own homes were enrolled in the 
nobility of Japan. All must have infused a consider- 
able strain of Korean blood into the Japanese people 
of both high and low degree.. 

With Silla and Korai Japan's relations were not 
so close and friendly as with Pekche. Both sent 
frequent missions bearing what the Japanese always 
termed tribute, though it is somewhat difficult to 
understand why Korai, which was never conquered 
and had nothing to fear from Japan, should charge 
herself with the expense, trouble, and danger of send- 
ing tribute. Both, but Korai especially, sent mis- 
sionaries in considerable numbers. Korai, owing to 
her propinquity to China, was in advance of both 
Pekche and Silla in acquiring the civilisation and 
literature of China and in her conversion to 
Buddhism ; and the so-called tribute of Korai was 
principally the sacred images and books which 
were brought by missionaries, not as tokens of the 
vassalage of their country but as symbols of the 
holy faith which it was their dear object to instil 
into Japan. On two occasions only do the Japanese 
seem to have come into actual contact with Korai. 
Mimana, as already mentioned, bore some re- 
semblance to a Japanese colony, so much so, at 
least, that a Japanese resident and a garrison 
of Japanese troops were always stationed there. In 
464 Silla, invaded by Korai, when her conditions were 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 101 

" more precarious than a pile of eggs " sought the 
assistance of the Japanese from Mimana, and with 
their aid drew the Koraians into an ambush and 
totally defeated them. Nearly one hundred years 
later, the Emperor, taking the part of Pekche in 
her struggles, sent Sadahiko, a general whose name 
still lives in historical romance, " in command of 
an army of several tens of thousands of men," to 
attack Korai in conjunction with the troops of Pekche. 
He was victorious, and took and plundered the 
capital. Notwithstanding the assistance given to Silla 
on the occasions just mentioned, her relations with 
Japan were the reverse of those of allies. The fre- 
quent piratical descents that were made on her coasts 
by freebooters have already been referred to. More 
serious expeditions were occasionally sent against her, 
provoked by her own aggressions on Japan's friends 
of Pekche, or on Japan's own sphere of Mimana. 
In 554, two years after the last King of Pekche made 
his despairing effort to buy Japan's assistance with 
the gift of his Buddhist treasures, his kingdom was 
invaded by the combined forces of Korai and Silla. 
It fell before them and the King, who was taken 
prisoner, was, by the orders of the Sillans, murdered 
by a slave. Eight years later, in 526, the Nihongi 
curtly records that " Silla destroyed the Miyake of 
Imna." Attempts were subsequently made to re- 
establish the Japanese supremacy in it. In the 
autumn of the year in which it fell, an army was 
sent against Silla, which at first met with some 
success, but was eventually completely defeated by 
the Sillans, and two of its generals were taken 
prisoners. One of the two was accompanied in the 
field by his wife. She was taken prisoner along with 
her husband, who shamefully purchased his own life 
by giving his wife to be his captor's concubine. 
To make her dishonour complete she was ravished by 



102 THE STORY OF KOREA 

her new master in a public place, and then contemptu- 
ously restored to her husband. He was willing to 
take her back, but she was " deeply mortified and 
refused to live with him, saying : * Thou, my former 
lord, having for no good reason sold thy hand- 
maiden's person, with what countenance could I now 
live with thee? ' " And she persisted in her refusal. 
The second prisoner was a man of different stamp. 
He was stripped of his clothes by the Sillans, and 
then, his naked back turned towards Japan, he was 
ordered to utter an insultingly contemptuous invita- 
tion to his own countrymen. He persisted in shouting 
the words of the invitation to the Sillans, and as 
torture failed to weaken his steadfastness, he was 
finally killed. 

Long before the fall of the two kingdoms of Korai 
and Pekche, Japan had begun to seek direct at its 
fountain-head the knowledge which she first derived 
through Korea. Japan was known to China at an 
early period of the Christian era, probably through 
Chinese adventurers who made their way to the Island 
Empire as they did to every part of the Asiatic 
continent ; but several centuries elapsed before 
Japan endeavoured to open up communication on 
her own account. In 306 (the proper date should be 
426), we are told, two Koreans who, fifteen years 
previously, had emigrated to Japan with a large 
following and had been naturalised, were sent to 
China " to procure seamstresses/' and had succeeded 
in fulfilling their mission with the aid of Korai. 
Visitors from China subsequently came to the Court 
on two or three occasions during the fifth century, 
bringing with them skilled workers, weavers and 
seamstresses, and were courteously received, but 
throughout the whole of the succeeding century China, 
divided between the northern and southern empires, 
was in a state of anarchy, and was too absorbed in 



EARLY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN 103 

her own affairs to be able to pay attention to a land 
beyond the sea. 

Towards the close of the sixth century China was 
reunited under the first Emperor of the Swi dynasty, 
and in the year 607 an official of the fifth rank, 
accompanied by an interpreter, was sent from Japan 
to the Court of Y ( ang-Ti, the third Emperor of the 
Swi dynasty, the leader of the armies which invaded 
Korai in 611. Yang-Ti was cruel and debauched 
but vain and ambitious. He took the opportunity of 
sending along with the returning Japanese an envoy 
with a suite of twelve persons, to whom the Empress 
of Japan, who was reigning at the time, at the advice 
of her great minister Shotoku Daishi, paid high 
honour. When the envoy took his departure, eight 
Japanese students, four of whom were priests, accom- 
panied him to his master's capital at Liaoyang, which, 
under Yang-Ti, had become a great seat of learning 
and possessed a library, founded by him, of 54,000 
volumes, and remained there for more than thirty 
years. From that time the Japanese students, who 
had hitherto completed their education in Korea, 
found their way in increasing numbers to China. 
Korea, as a source of learning and civilisation, as 
the provider of teachers, became neglected, and all 
intercourse with her gradually ceased. For six 
hundred years after the fall of Korai and Pekche and 
the unification of the peninsula by Silla it is hardly 
mentioned in Japanese history, and it was not till 
Kublai Khan launched his great armada that it again 
came into direct contact with Japan. Japan had 
acquired all that Korea could give her, and united 
Korea, under the protection of China, was too strong 
to be lightly meddled with by a nation whose hands 
were full of its own domestic affairs. 



CHAPTER VI 



UNITED KOREA 

Wang Kien was not long on his throne ere the last 
touch of legality was given to it by his recognition 
and investiture with the royal dignity by his Suzerain, 
the Emperor of China. While slowly climbing his 
upward path he had shown himself, not only a brave 
and able general but a capable civil administrator, 
receiving his first lessons in the science of govern- 
ment while acting as the lieutenant of the tyrant 
Kung-I in the provinces occupied in his name, and 
now that he was himself supreme ruler he soon 
showed that the lessons had not been thrown away. 
Valuable civil reforms were instituted. State institu- 
tions and national customs were modelled under the 
influence of the Chinese methods, and among other 
systems copied from them was that of the examina- 
tions of aspirants for civil posts, which lasted till 
the present generation in Korea and still exists in 
China. Buddhism was encouraged, with all its 
civilising influences, and a strong and well-disciplined 
army, no longer a terror but a protection to peaceful 
agriculturalists and traders, kept order throughout 
the provinces. He was nearly sixty years of age 
when he came to the throne, and his life, with all its 
success, had been strenuous from early youth, princi- 
pally passed in the field, where he shared the hard- 
ships of his soldiers. Now anxiety and hardship were 
replaced by the ease and luxury of an aristocratic 

104 



UNITED KOREA 105 

Court, but the new King was not destined to enjoy 
them for long. He died within seven years from; 
his accession, leaving to his son an undisputed suc- 
cession, and having founded a dynasty which was 
destined to occupy the throne of Korea for more 
than 450 years. Wang Kien preceded lyeyasu, the 
great founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns 
in Japan, by more than six centuries. The careers 
of the two, though the ages in which they lived 
were so widely distant, present many similarities. 
Both were military adventurers ; both carved out 
their own fortunes ; both possessed themselves of 
the honours and dignities of the leaders whom they 
had at first served as lieutenants ; both founded 
dynasties of long duration ; both were equally great 
as generals and as civil organisers and adminis- 
trators ; and both left testaments by which their 
successors were to be guided in their Government. 
Wang Kien advised his successors to cultivate the 
Buddhist religion but to be sparing in their ex- 
penditure on it ; to choose as the successors to the 
throne, not the eldest son but the one who showed 
himself to be best fitted for it ; to encourage and 
use the services of good men, and to keep bad at 
a distance ; to keep the army ready, and always be 
on the watch. These were precepts by which he 
had guided Tiis own life, and its success testified 
to their wisdom. 

It is not within the scope of the present work to 
relate in detail the story of his successors. The 
dynasty survived till the year 1392, and the 
characters of the kings during the four centuries 
of its existence, naturally varied. Some were worthy 
followers of the founder. Others had all the worst 
vices that have characterised the worst sovereigns of 
the worst epochs either in the East or West. The 
advice of the founder as regards Buddhism was faith- 



106 THE STORY OF KOREA 

fully followed in one point but not in the other. 
Several of his successors fell completely under the 
domination of Buddhist priests, to whom in their 
religious fervour they surrendered all their freedom 
of will. The administration fell into the hands of 
a Buddhist hierarchy, who governed the country 
solely in the interests of their own religion and whose 
ranks were recruited from the aristocratic section of 
the people, not only voluntarily — and the tempta- 
tions of rank, dignity, wealth, and influence were 
so great that they should have been sufficient to 
ensure a constant succession of ready aspirants for 
the coif — but compulsorily, every family in which 
there were four sons being ordered by royal rescript 
to devote one to the priesthood. Even this was not 
enough, and the order was afterwards extended to 
families in which there were only three sons. 
Temples of imposing magnificence were constructed 
at great cost, and when the buildings were finished 
more expense was incurred in splendid ceremonials 
at their dedication, at which priests from all parts 
of the country assembled in thousands, and still more 
expense in their endowment and in the celebration of 
the annual festivals. 1 

As in Japan, in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies, the priests became strong enough to combine 
the callings of the soldier and the priest, converted 
their monasteries into impregnable fortresses, from 
which, when their ghostly influence temporarily waned, 

1 During the eighth century an extraordinary revival of Buddhism 
took place in China, both among high and low. " Generals forsook 
their armies, ministers their portfolios, members of the imperial 
family their palaces, and merchants their business, and their families 
to build or dwell in monasteries, away from the clash of arms, the 
cares of state, or the din and bustle of life " (Ross). Korea in the 
fifteenth century seems not to have been unlike China in the eighth 
in its Buddhist fervour. 






UNITED KOREA 107 

they sallied forth in well-armed and disciplined bands 
to revive it with the sword. Beneath their tyranny 
and exaction the lower ranks of the people were 
reduced to such misery that they sought refuge by 
[voluntarily sacrificing their status of free citizens 
and enrolling themselves as the hereditary slaves of 
great families, who armed and used them in furthering 
at the sword's point their own selfish ambition with 
utter indifference to the welfare of the State. On 
the one side were the powerful priesthood, numerous, 
wealthy, and determined, always with the sword in 
the right hand though they might carry the Buddhist 
Bible in the left ; and on the other were the civil 
and military mandarins, whose religious sympathies 
were gradually exhibited in favour of Confucianism, 
which, notwithstanding all the Court favour shown 
to the Buddhists, had been slowly making its way 
in Korea from the time when the doctrines of its great 
founder first filtered in from China. As if these 
two contending factions, priests and nobles, for the 
favour of the King and the offices and power of 
government were not sufficient for the destruction 
of peace and order in a distracted State, further 
bitter rivalry burst out between the civil and military 
mandarins. One of the former, in the presence of 
the King, struck a military officer of high rank, whose 
cause was warmly espoused by his fellows, and a 
general massacre of the civil officials ensued. The 
military then seized all the offices of state, deposed 
and banished the King, placing his nephew on the 
throne in his stead, and threw the whole administra- 
tion into such disorder in their struggles both with 
the priesthood and the civilians that the whole country 
fell into a state of utter anarchy. 

The internal condition of Korea throughout this 
long period of disorder resembled that of Japan 
when, under the domination of the Ashikaga Shoguns, 



108 THE STORY OF KOREA 

it was a scene of perpetual civil war, in which the 
people were reduced to the [utmost extremes of misery, 
starved, spoiled, and slain by the exactions, greed, 
and cruelty of the armies of contending feudatories. 
The Japanese were, however, spared the additional 
suffering and the humiliation of foreign invasion. 

Not so the Koreans. Japan, guarded from all 
foreign invaders by stormy seas and her own 
dangerous coasts, could mould her destiny secure 
from outside interference. Korea had always on her 
northern frontier restless, ambitious, and war-trained 
(neighbours, who were ever on the watch for the 
opportunities and temptations that might be given 
to them by internal weakness or dissension in either 
China or Korea to extend their march southward from 
their northern steppes. One of the great Tuguisic 
tribes of nomads, whose original home was in Central 
Siberia, around Lake Baikal, and who had pursued 
a steady career of conquest, eastwards and south- 
wards, till they reached the frontiers of both China 
and Korea, was the Khitan, who gained possession of 
the whole of Manchuria and Liao tung, and whose 
strength was so great that in the eleventh century 
even the Emperors of China were glad to purchase 
immunity from their invasions by the payment of 
heavy ransoms. It is from their name that that of 
Cathay, by which China was first made known ito 
medieval Europe, and which still survives in the 
Russian Khitai, is derived. 

Another powerful tribe who are said to be of the 
same race as the Manchus, the present rulers of the 
Empire, were the Nyuchi, who, coming from homes 
that lay in the wide districts which extended from the 
River Tumen to the River Sungari, spread themselves 
along the whole of the north-eastern frontier of 
Korea. They have left even a greater mark on 
Chinese history than the Khitan, whom they con- 



UNITED KOREA 109 

quered and displaced, in that they overran the Empire 
as far as the Yangtse and founded the Kin or Golden 
dynasty of the Emperors of Northern China. As 
Cathay is derived from Khitan, so is the name China 
said to take its origin from Kin, which is pronounced 
" Jin " and sometimes written " Chin." l A century 
later the Mongols — the " Braves " — another Central 
Asian tribe, descended, according to their own myths, 
from a blue wolf, migrated southward from their 
original home in the north-eastern Gobi, and, gather- 
ing strength and skill as they advanced, in their turn 
conquered the Nyuchi, overthrew the Kin dynasty, 
and, under their great leaders, Genghis Khan and his 
grandson, Kublai Khan, founded an empire which 
virtually included, not only all China but the whole 
north and centre of the Continent of Asia, and ex- 
tended from the China Sea to the shores of the Black 
Sea. All these tribes, when at the zenith of their 
fame and power, made their mark on Korean history, 
and either as invaders or allies, or in both capacities, 
added to the sufferings of the people by the wars 
which they forced on them or into which they dragged 
them. 

The Khitans, occupying the territory north of the 
Yalu, claimed to be legitimate representatives of the 
ancient kingdom of Kao Korai, and as such the right- 
ful owners of that part of the peninsula which lay 
to the north of the River Tatong. The claim was 
resisted by the Koreans, and the result was a raid 
in which the whole of the claimed Korean territory 

1 This is the derivation of " China " which is usually accepted. 
Mr. Ross, however, prefers to find its origin in the title of the Tsin 
dynasty, under which the Great Wall was built. He also derives 
" Mongol " from the Mongolian word meaning " Silver," not "brave " 
as in the text, assuming that it was adopted as the title of the 
dynasty in imitation of the immediately preceding " Iron ' and 
"Gold" dynasties. All three dynasties were of Turanian origin. 



110 THE STORY OF KOREA 

was ruthlessly ravaged, though the raiders were ulti- 
mately driven back by the Koreans. Frightened at 
his own success, and apprehensive, in view of the 
great and increasing power of the Khitans, of what 
the future might bring, the Korean King sent an 
embassy to humbly acknowledge their supremacy and 
to beg their goodwill for the future. But the Khitan, 
who were now master of all the territory comprised 
in the modern Chinese provinces of Chili, Liaotung, 
and Kirin, who were already contemplating the 
assumption of the Imperial dignity and the title of 
Hwang Ti, or Emperor, which can properly be given 
on earth only to the Emperor of China, though 
pleased with this testimonial to their growing great- 
ness from an ancient and historic tributary of the 
Empire, were not satisfied. They demanded that the 
King of Korea should come and render homage in 
person, and when he refused, doubtful whether, if 
he trusted himself to Khitan hands, he should ever be 
permitted to return, another and more serious in- 
vasion followed ; and in i o 1 1 the Khitan penetrated 
as far as the capital, Sunto, which they captured and 
burned. So changed had the Koreans become from 
their ancestors, who hurled defiance at and drove 
back the trained armies of the Tang emperors, that 
now a Korean soldier would not dare " even to look 
in the face of a Khitan." 

In their despair, Korea appealed to the Nyuchi for 
help, which was readily given. The combined forces 
of the Nyuchi and Koreans, by a pretended flight, 
tempted the victorious Khitans into an ambush, in 
which they were slaughtered in thousands. The 
alliance thus begun was continued between the two 
victors, and as the ambition of the Nyuchi, as they 
grew in numbers and organisation, and spreading 
all along the northern frontier of China drove the 
Khitans farther south and west, was satisfied with 






UNITED KOREA 111 

their conquests in China, they did not attempt to 
interfere with Korea, who, on her side, humbly 
acknowledged the military supremacy of her ally and 
rendered to the Kin dynasty the same tributes of 
vassalage that she had been wont to lay before the 
former occupants of the Imperial throne. For two 
hundred years she enjoyed, as far as her external 
relations were concerned, unbroken peace, and then 
the dogs of war were once more let loose, and she 
had again to suffer the horrors of foreign invasion. 
This time her experience was even more bitter than 
it had ever been before. 

In the year 1 2 1 3 Genghis Khan, in his career of 
world-conquest, completely defeated the Kins, and 
thenceforward the protection of its old ally was lost 
to Korea. When the Mongol leader had consoli- 
dated his power in North China, and his armies 
were pursuing their career of conquest to the Yangtse, 
he turned his attention to Korea and soon let loose 
his invincible horsemen on its northern provinces. 
Everything gave way before them. City after city 
was quickly taken ; a heavy tribute was exacted ; the 
King and his Court fled from the capital, the King 
carrying with him the coffin which contained the 
remains of his ancestor, the founder of his line, but 
flying with such precipitancy that both he and his 
Court suffered intensely on the way : 

H It was the midst of the rainy weather, when the roads are well- 
nigh impassable. The whole cavalcade soon found itself mired, and 
torrents of rain added materially to the discomfort. Even ladies of 
noble rank were seen wading with bare limbs in the mud and 
carrying bundles on their heads. The wailing and crying of this 
forlorn multitude was audible for a long distance." ■ 

All took refuge in the island of Kangwha, where 
the Mongols, who were only horsemen, to whom 
1 Hulbert, " History of Korea," vol. i. p. 195. 



112 THE STORY OF KOREA 

even the few hundred yards of sea which separated 
the island from the mainland were an insuperable 
barrier, could not follow them. The Government 
being thus vacated, it was replaced by Mongol pre- 
fects, seventy-two of whom were appointed to carry 
on its details throughout the country. A heavy 
tribute was exacted, and two thousand members of 
noble families were taken as hostages to China. All 
Korea now became virtually a province of China, 
just as the beaten kingdoms of Korai and Pekche had 
been five hundred years before. The King lived 
in helpless seclusion at Kangwha, where he remained 
from 1232 to 1259. During this period his unhappy 
country was not allowed to remain in peace. In 
1 24 1 his people, maddened by the exactions of the 
Mongol prefects, who neither understood nor cared 
for the time -established customs and institutions of 
Korea, and carried out their duties utterly regardless 
of both, rose in rebellion, and in the first brief 
moments of success, in which they took the small 
Mongol guards by surprise, murdered all the prefects. 
They had to pay a terrible reckoning for their out- 
break. Kublai Khan, boiling with anger, promptly 
dispatched an overwhelming army, against which the 
Koreans, now very different fighting men to the hardy 
mountaineers of old Korai, could make no stand, and 
were defeated and slaughtered wholesale by the Mon- 
golian horsemen wherever they met. The whole 
country was once more completely overrun, more 
heavy tributes were exacted, a more iron discipline 
imposed, and all the people, irrespective of rank or 
class, either cowered beneath the tyranny of their 
conquerors or, abandoning their homes, sought 
shelter in the wildest fastnesses of their rugged moun- 
tains or in the islands off the coast, both equally 
inaccessible to the Mongol horsemen. Enough were 
left behind to furnish material to the conquerors 



UNITED KOREA 113 

for a prolonged carnival of slaughter and for slaves, 
who were carried to China in tens of thousands. 

In 1259 the King — the son and successor of him 
who had first fled to Kangwha, who had died on the 
island — was induced to inaugurate his reign by return- 
ing to the capital in the first year after his accession, 
but it was only to rivet more firmly the chains on 
his Government. He was given a Mongol princess 
in marriage, and from this time the position of the 
kings was much akin to that of the Jieaven- 
descended Emperors of Japan throughout the Fuji- 
wara domination, the place of the Fujiwara in Japan 
being taken by the Mongol Court in Korea. As the 
Emperors of Japan were obliged to take their con- 
sorts from the ladies of the Fujiwara family, so 
were the Kings of Korea from the ladies of the 
Mongol Court, and the kings were the husbands and 
sons of Mongol ladies, under the absolute control 
of Mongol fathers-in-law or grandfathers, who left 
to them no active share in the administration of their 
Government. As the Fujiwara promptly deposed 
every emperor who showed the least tendency to 
become restive under their tutorship, so did the Mon- 
gols depose or exile Korean kings who ventured to 
assert their independence. 

The condition of the kings was even more galling 
than that of their Imperial brothers in Japan. The 
latter were rendered nullities by their own subjects 
of the same stock as themselves, their near relatives, 
who, if they took away all real power from their 
nominal sovereigns, had the fullest sympathy with 
them in all their national customs and observances, 
and tendered to them outwardly the profound rever- 
ence that was due to the vicegerents of the gods of 
heaven on earth and the direct lineal descendants 
of the greatest of all the gods. In Korea the kings 
were the creatures of tutors who were their own 

8 



114 THE STORY OF KOREA 

relatives by maternal blood or marriage, but who 
were alien to them in race ; who were ignorant of 
and totally without sympathy with their national 
traditions ; who, in the contempt which bold anld 
successful soldiers have for a beaten people who 
have lost their military qualities in ease and 
effeminacy, regarded their sovereign only as ,a 
gilded puppet. The kings were forbidden even to 
use their native language or to preserve the 
traditional ceremonies of their Court. Nothing 
Korean was left them. They were forced to speak 
only the language and wear only the dress of their 
conquerors, and the Court at Sunto was in all its 
details a replica of that of Peking, where Kublai 
Khan had fixed his capital. The queens, too, shocked 
their subjects by their freedom. The seclusion of 
women is the most cardinal point in the social system 
of Korea. There is no record in Korean history of 
women who played the great parts on the historic 
stage of their country that so many of the Japanese 
women have done, even in military events. Korean 
heroines have earned the few humble niches that 
have been given to them in the national temple of 
fame more by passive endurance than by active forti- 
tude. They have borne torture with the calm courage 
and unyielding determination of the early Roman 
martyrs or their later sisters in Japan, and have gone 
to the stake or scaffold without a tremor ; but they 
have never stood, as did so many Japanese, beside 
their husbands or sons to share actively in the last 
despairing defence of a hard-fought siege. Their 
whole training utterly unfitted them for heroism of 
that nature. Very different was the upbringing of 
the Mongol princesses, the daughters of men who 
were seldom absent from the battle or hunting field ; 
and when, while on the throne of Korea, some of 
these showed themselves bold horsewomen and keen 



UNITED KOREA 115 

hunters, the Korean sense of rigid female propriety 
was shocked to its very core. 

When the banners of the conquering Mongols had 
been carried in triumph and the beat of their drums 
had been heard all over Asia, from Korea and Siam 
to the Black Sea and Moscow, and Kublai Khan was 
the acknowledged ruler of an entire continent, of a 
greater extent of territory than all the rest of the 
history of the world shows to have ever passed under 
the sway of one man, one insignificant island Empire 
was still beyond the reach of his arm, was still un- 
numbered among his vassals. Japan was at this 
period, under the able and firm government of the 
Hojo regents, enjoying one of the few interregnums 
of peace and prosperity that fell to her lot in the 
Middle Ages. The intercourse which she carried on 
in earlier centuries with the Court of the southern 
Empire at Nanking, when she was supplementing, at 
its original fountain, the learning which she first 
acquired through Korea, had fallen into abeyance ; 
and Japan, being now able to provide her own 
teachers, had dispensed with those of China, just as 
she did in the nineteenth century with those of 
Europe when she had drawn from them all they had 
to impart. Her only connection with China was 
maintained by her piratical cruisers, which harried 
the coasts and terrorised and plundered the in- 
habitants. It was through these pirates, no doubt, 
that Kublai Khan's attention was drawn to Japan. 
His first motive in opening up negotiations was to 
put a stop to their raids, but in doing so two birds 
could be killed with one stone and his might and 
majesty made known beyond the seas, as they were 
on the continent, at the same time that security could 
be obtained for his people on the coasts of China. 
The story of his abortive negotiations and of his 
ill-fated expeditions belongs rather to Japan than 



116 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Korea ; but as Korea was, sorely against her 
will, drawn into both, and as her suffering^ from 1 
their consequences were long and bitter, it must 
be told here with the utmost brevity of which it 
admits. 

Five embassies were sent from China to Japan, 
the first in 1268, the last in 1273, each accompanied 
by Korean representatives. The opening words of 
the first letter from Kublai Khan, brought by the 
first embassy, were in themselves sufficient to kindle 
the anger and indignation of the high-spirited, un- 
conquered Japanese to white heat — " The Emperor of 
China addresses the King of Japan." The adventurer 
and -robber, who had only emerged a generation 
previously from barbaric nomadism, by these words 
placed himself on a far higher level than the time- 
honoured Ruler of the Land of the Gods, himself a 
son of the gods. No reply was vouchsafed to the 
letter, though the embassy waited in Japan in vain 
for nearly six months. The subsequent embassies 
had even a worse reception. The envoys were de- 
tained as prisoners where they landed on the coast 
of Kiusiu, and not permitted to proceed to the Court 
either of the Shogun at Kamakura or of the Emperor 
at Kioto. Then Kublai determined to teach reason 
to the audacious and ill-mannered islanders. The 
Mongols, as before stated, were no sailors and haid 
no ships. But the Koreans, their humble vassals, 
were both experienced sailors and could construct 
ships, and Korea was the nearest point to Japan, 
from which the crossing of the sea from the continent, 
was shortest. So the unhappy people were dragged 
into a quarrel in which they had no interest, with 
another nation whose military prowess was as well 
known to them as it was the reverse to their tyrant, 
and ordered to prepare a transport fleet, provisions 
for the Mongol army, not only while on its march 



UNITED KOREA 117 

through Korea but during the entire expedition, and 
a military contingent to co-operate with it. 

It was near the close of the year 1274 that this 
expedition sailed. The islands of Tsushima and Iki 
were taken after a stout resistance, but when the 
expedition reached the coast of Kiusiu the landing 
force was outnumbered and out-fought by the de- 
fenders ; and though the latter suffered heavily, the 
invaders were driven back to their ships with still 
greater loss. The defeat was followed by a storm, 
which caused such damage to the ships that it was 
considered advisable that the whole fleet should with- 
draw, it having now become quite evident to the 
experienced Mongol soldiers that their force was en- 
tirely insufficient for the task assigned to them. They 
had on land hitherto been accustomed to carry all 
before them. Their one fight with the Japanese had 
taught them that they had now a foe who, man for 
man, was the equal of the best of themselves. 

On the other side, the Japanese, though victorious, 
had also lost heavily ; and Kublai, thinking they 
would hesitate to give him cause for another invasion, 
tried the experiment of another embassy, which had 
orders not to return without a written reply. This 
time his envoys were not only imprisoned but decapi- 
tated. This was in 1275. During the next Jfour 
years he was too fully occupied with continental 
affairs to give his attention to those beyond the sea, 
and it was not till 1279 that the tranquillisation of 
Southern China afforded him leisure to think again 
of Japan. Then, unwarned by the fate of the pre- 
vious, he sent another and a last embassy. Its 
(members were not, as had been their immediate 
predecessors, brought to Kamakura, but beheaded in 
Kiusiu, where they landed. This final outrage of 
the elementary principles of international courtesy 
was more than a much milder and weaker man than 



118 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the conqueror of continental Asia could have borne, 
and he was in no mood to submit to the gross insults 
which the Japanese had added to their former 
defiance. He was also now in a much stronger 
position than he had been at the time of his first 
experiment in over-seas expeditions. Then he was 
dependent solely on the Koreans for sailors and ships. 
Now he had at his disposal all the maritime resources 
of Southern China, on whose wind-swept coasts were 
tens of thousands of competent sailors. There an 
armada of 300 great ships with innumerable tenders 
was prepared, while the unhappy, exhausted, and 
downtrodden Korea was called upon to furnish 
another great fleet of more than 1,000 ships of all 
sizes fully manned and equipped. The fighting men 
embarked in both fleets were, according to the 
Japanese authorities, more than 100,000, but more 
than 180,000 according to the Korean and Chinese. 

The story of this expedition has been told else- 
where by the present writer, 1 and it will suffice here 
to say that even greater disaster attended it than 
that which befell the Armada of Spain on the British 
coasts ; and of all the proud force that sailed so 
gallantly for the conquest of Japan, it is said that 
only three men survived to carry the tale to their 
master. Storm and shipwreck caused the greatest 
loss, and on the shores of Kiusiu " the dead bodies 
covered the sea so that one could walk on it." 
Neither Kublai nor his own soldiers had any heart 
for further attempts to crush the independence of 
the islanders, who, in their turn, could do the Mongols 
no vital injury ; but Korea, Kublai's unwilling 
partner, which had been drained of her very life- 
blood in providing men, ships, and supplies, had to 
pay heavily for her share. For the next three hundred 
years her coasts were harried from end to end by 
1 Vide, " The Story of Old Japan/' 



UNITED KOREA 119 

Japanese freebooters, who not only scoured the seas 
on her east from the River Tumen southwards and 
swept the Korean shipping off them, but made their 
way even as far as the mouth of the River Tatong 
on the west, landed in and plundered the Island of 
Kangwha, captured and burned Hangyang (Seoul), 
and came almost within shouting distance of the 
capital itself, killing, without distinction of age or 
sex, burning, and plundering wherever they appeared. 
The Japanese soldiers and sailors of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries looked upon the Koreans pre- 
cisely as the sailors of Elizabeth looked upon the 
Spaniards of the Western Main — would-be oppressors, 
if they had the courage and skill to carry out their 
wishes ; vermin whose extinction in any way and 
by any means was an acceptable tribute to the gods 
of heaven ; poltroons who, though outnumbering 
their overseas foes by three to one, would always 
flee before them, the wholesale plunder of whose 
property was no robbery. In Japan itself, through 
these centuries, peace was unknown ; every man's 
hand was against his neighbour ; might was the 
only right, and whosoever could enriched himself by 
despoiling others. Soldiers whose feudal lords were 
defeated and their fiefs confiscated, masterless and 
homeless, proscribed fugitives in their own country, 
iwere always ready to seek across the seas com- 
pensation for what they had lost at home ; and the 
scant mercy which they had experienced from 
enemies and victors of their own nationality gave 
them little inducement to show mercy to aliens who 
could not defend themselves, their women, or their 
goods. Life to the Koreans on the coasts through 
those days was one unending dread. Neither day 
nor night was ever free from the anxious expectation 
of the signal that announced the approach of the 
swift galleys, carrying ruthless, unsparing plunderers, 



120 THE STORY OF KOREA 

reduced by their own miseries at home to a condition 
of semi-savage ferocity. 

The Mongol dynasty in China lasted till 1368. 
Kublai Khan died in 1294, and his successors on 
the throne rapidly degenerated. They had always 
been aliens and conquerors in China ; they never 
assimilated with the real natives, and only main- 
tained their power when their strong right arms 
were guided by capable rulers, and when the last 
failed the first were of little use. In 1355 the 
oppressed Chinese rose in rebellion, under a leader 
who was the son of a common labourer and who 
himself had been a Buddhist priest, who changed 
his robes for armour and his rosary for the sword, 
and, placing himself at the head of his countrymen, 
proved himself a general of consummate genius and a 
civil ruler of infinite wisdom. Before him the Mon- 
gols were driven out of China, and when that had 
been accomplished the labourer's son, the ex -priest, 
ascended the Imperial throne as the Emperor Hung 
Woo, and became the founder of the Ming or Bright 
dynasty of the Emperors of China, which lasted from 
1368 till 1644. 

Throughout all the reigns of the Mongol Emperors 
the Kings of Korea, closely allied to them by blood, 
were their subservient vassals, rendering the most 
abject obedience to all their behests ; and the 
degradation of the Korean Court in its own interior 
morality was even more marked than that of the 
Imperial Court at Peking. When rebellion raised 
its head in China, and the rebels, under a low-born 
monk, drove their oppressors from throne and power, 
the infection crossed the borders and spread into 
Korea, and here, too, a capable leader was found 
when the exigency demanded it. 

The last sovereigns of the dynasty of Korea who 
survived the fall of the Mongols, when they were 



UNITED KOREA 121 

relieved from the check which their former suzerains 
had exercised over them and had not yet had time 
to feel the strong hand of the Mings, gave way more 
and more to ease and licentiousness, and all the 
evils of their misgovernment became intensified. It 
had become the custom of the Crown Prince to spend 
part of his early manhood at the Mongol Court at 
Peking, where he imbibed Mongol vices and the taste 
for the coarse pleasures of the Mongol, and found 
the attractions of the Court so superior, both for 
himself and his Mongol wife, to those of his own, 
that often after he had succeeded to the throne his 
time was passed rather at Peking than in Sunto, his 
government being left to the tender mercies of cruel 
and avaricious officials. His predecessors wasted 
their resources in the building of temples and the 
promotion of Buddhism. Now it was on immense 
hunting trips that treasure was lavished, and the 
^cultivated fields of the people were ruthlessly 
trampled and the crops destroyed by the swarms of 
horsemen who accompanied the hunt. The Mongol 
queens often proved jealous consorts, and exercised 
a vigilant watch on their royal husbands ; but even 
the dread of their masculine wrath did not prevent 
the kings indulging in the worst licence. One king 
used to insist on the privilege of maiden rights ; 
another not only furnished his harem with the fairest 
maidens of noble families, but supplied his relatives 
at Peking with those he did not require for himself, 
and created such a reign of terror that the fathers 
of attractive daughters among the nobles were forced 
to hide them in obscurity ; another, not satisfied 
with his own harem, appropriated that of his dead 
father, and with all the chosen beauties of both 
harems at his disposal for the gratification of his 
lust, he used to wander in the streets at night and, 
entering haphazard the houses of well-to-do citizens, 



122 THE STORY OF KOREA 

violate the daughters who took his fancy. All this 
time the people groaned under an intolerable burden 
of taxation, which was always being increased and 
the proceeds devoted solely to the licence and 
extravagance of the Court. 

At the head of the Army in the reign of the last 
of the depraved dynasty was Yi Taijo, who, though 
of noble descent from an old Silla family and the 
son of an illustrious soldier, owed his position entirely 
to his own merits and services. He was as virtuous 
as he was brave and wise. He had especially dis- 
tinguished himself against the Japanese pirates, whom 
he often routed while his sovereign was passing his 
time in alternate hunting and debauchery. Weary 
with the ills of the nation, which he had in vain 
tried to minimise, he formed a conspiracy with his 
fellow-officers ; and though the King was his own 
son-in-law, he forced him to abdicate, and then 
banished him and all his family to Kang Wha. The 
throne was now vacant. There was no one in the 
kingdom so fitted to fill it as the leader of the con- 
spiracy, who had endeared himself to all the people 
by his services to the nation and by his wisdom and 
his goodness, and Yi Taijo was acclaimed as King 
amidst universal rejoicing. The choice of the people 
was readily ratified by the Ming Emperor, whose 
sympathies naturally went to an oppressed people 
and a leader who had overthrown an unworthy family 
of tyrants ; and when he had conferred the formal 
investiture on Yi Taijo, the legal confirmation of the 
latter 's position was complete. The dynasty founded 
by Wang Kien in 935 thus came to an end in 1392, 
there having been in all thirty-three sovereigns of the 
line. That founded by Yi Taijo was destined to 
even a longer life, having continued to our own day, 
and being only closed when the annexation by Japan 
extinguished all kingship in Korea. 



CHAPTER VII 

CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 

The lives of the founders of the two dynasties of 
sovereigns who have reigned over united Korea 
present many similarities. Both were soldiers who 
by their bravery and skill raised themselves from a 
comparatively humble position in life to one of royal 
dignity. Both led hard and strenuous lives. The 
personal merits and national services of both endeared 
them to the hearts of all their people and caused their 
accession to be received by all classes with unanimous 
acclamations of joy, in the hope, in the first case, 
that a country long torn by civil war would thence- 
forward enjoy internal peace and present a united 
front to foreign foes ; in the second, that an end 
would be put to a selfish and debauched Court that, 
in the last century of its existence, had wrought untold 
miseries on a misgoverned and oppressed people. 
Both attained their final dignities when far advanced 
in life, and both lived to enjoy and utilise them only 
for a few brief years. 

Taijo's first act on coming to the throne was to 
found a new capital. When the present Emperor 
of Japan resumed, after the lapse of many centuries, 
the direct control of the administration of his Empire 
and founded what was practically a new Government, 
it was considered politically advisable to change the 
Imperial capital, and the seat of government was 
removed from the old city of Kioto to the modern 

123 



124 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Yedo (Tokio). A similar spirit seems to have 
actuated the Korean statesmen at each change of 
dynasty. When Silla, the last of the three kingdoms 
which shared the peninsula, fell, its historic capital, 
Kyun Ju, rich though it was in architectural splen- 
dours and in all the luxuries of life, was abandoned 
in favour of Sunto, and there the successors of 
Wang Kien held their Court during four hundred 
years. When the last degraded representative of the 
Wang dynasty was deposed in favour of that of the 
Taijo, it was again considered advisable that a new 
capital should be chosen, that the last traces of the 
old dynasty should be erased, and a new departure 
made locally as well as politically. Notwithstanding 
all that the inhabitants of Sunto had suffered from the 
last member of the old dynasty, they had known 
him and his predecessors as their sovereigns for four 
hundred years ; their city had shared in the reflected 
glory of the Throne, and they could not be easily 
reconciled to their new sovereign, however great 
were his merits. This sentimental attachment to the 
old dynasty has lasted even to the present day ; and 
though over five hundred years have passed, the 
inhabitants of Sunto still cling to the memories of the 
good old days when their city was a splendid capital, 
and, forgetting the infamies of their predecessors, 
still look on the Taijo as usurpers, and were to the 
last regarded by the Taijo sovereigns as unworthy 
of their confidence. 

The change in Korea was greater than that which 
our own day has witnessed in Japan. The Emperor 
of Japan only moved from one great city to another, 
less dignified in its memories and less venerable 
in all its religious and historical associations, but 
already wealthier, more splendid and prosperous than 
the one he had left. Taijo had to found his new 
capital by building a new city where there was only 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 125 

a village before. The site chosen is a high testi- 
monial to his strategic skill, his commercial instincts, 
his regard for historic associations, and his taste for 
natural beauties, a taste which he shared with all his 
countrymen, who, in their love of all that is beautiful 
in Nature, are second only to the Japanese. Kioto 
and Edinburgh are rivals in their claims to be the 
most picturesquely situated cities in the world. The 
capital of Korea, on the banks of the wide and swiftly 
flowing River Han, encircled, except where the river 
flows, by picturesque hills, almost worthy of the name 
of mountains, falls little behind either, though its 
physical characteristics are unlike both. It lies 
almost in the heart of the kingdom, nearly equidistant 
from the extreme north and south ; it is connected 
with the sea by one of the very few navigable rivers 
in Korea ; from the military point of view it is strong 
both in itself and in its outposts ; and in its historic 
memories it had equal claims to the sentiments of 
the descendants of all the three ancient kingdoms, 
as it lay near the frontiers where all three met. Taijo 
called his new capital Han Yang (the Fortress on the 
Han) ; but just as the old Imperial capital of Japan 
was popularly known, not by its ancient title of 
Heianjo (the Castle of Peace) but as Miyako, so 
Han Yang came to be spoken of only as Seoul, both 
Japanese and Korean words having the same 
meaning, " the capital." 

With the change of his capital the new King 
changed also the name of his kingdom. From the 
unification it had been known as Korai, the title of 
the far-away district north of the Sungari from which, 
according to the accepted myths, the founder of the 
Korean race originally migrated, and afterwards of 
the vigorous kingdom of the north which so long 
resisted the might of China. Taijo reverted to the 
still older title of the Kingdom of Ki Tse, and decreed 



126 THE STORY OF KOREA 

that his kingdom should henceforward be known as 
Chosen, the name by which their country has since 
been spoken of by the people, and by which it 
has been known to their Chinese and Japanese 
neighbours. 

The building of the new capital proceeded apace, 
and it was soon girdled with a crenelated wall, vary- 
ing from 25 to 40 feet in height, which winds over 
the hills and ravines on which the city is built for 
a total distance of 14 miles, and, with all its original 
gateways, remains to this day. There are eight 
gateways in all, each capped with one or two-storied 
pavilions and closed by heavy wooden gates. Two 
hundred thousand men were employed in its construc- 
tion. Some of the gates were only opened on rare 
and special occasions, such as for the egress of the 
King if it ever became necessary for him to take 
refuge in the mountain fortress of Pak-han, and all 
were rigidly closed from the hour at which the curfew 
was rung on the great city bell till dawn, between 
which hours neither rank nor money, neither cajolery 
nor bullying would procure admission for the belated 
traveller. While devoting himself to the building of 
the capital, the new King did not neglect the political 
reorganisation of the State. For administrative pur- 
poses the whole country was divided into eight 
provinces, which, though five of them have recently 
been subdivided by the Japanese into two, each re- 
taining its old name with the addition of North 
or South, nave continued as they were first de- 
liminated down to our own day. Buddhism, much 
though the country owed to it for its first civilisation, 
in later years had proved nothing but a curse through 
the arrogance, tyranny, and licence of the priests. 
It therefore now fell on evil days, and its influence 
and power were curbed. 

China was now governed by a sovereign of its 







••-TO 



VIEW OF SEOUL, LOOKING TOWARDS THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAIN. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 126. 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 127 

own people, and no longer lay prostrate beneath the 
descendants of semi-savage northern warriors ; the 
indigenous civilisation and literature of China were 
eagerly cultivated at Peking, and as the Ming emperor 
had promptly recognised the new Korean dynasty, 
Korea, both in gratitude and for her own sake, fol- 
lowed the Peking fashion. Confucianism became her 
recognised religion and the basis of her moral ethics 
instead of Buddhism. Success in examinations in 
Chinese literature, with its consequent degrees, was 
made the sole passport to official employment ; the 
system of taxation was equitably reformed, and the 
whole military system reorganised, so that the army 
became a reality instead of what it had been under 
the last of the Yangs, a rabble that was impotent 
against foreign foes, and a terror only to the peaceful 
citizens of its own country. Feudalism was abolished. 
It had only existed in a very modified form in Korea, 
but some nobles had gathered around them such large 
bands of armed retainers that, under the preceding 
dynasty, they became a danger to the peace of the 
State, often using their power against the Court. 
They were now ordered to disband these retainers 
and their old military power therefore ceased to exist. 
Diplomatic representations were made to Japan to 
demand the repression of the pirates, whose raids still 
continued, not only on the coasts of Korea but of 
China ; but Japan was at this time in a condition 
of anarchy which rivalled the worst days of Korea, 
and its Government, even if willing, was helpless to 
curb its own lawless subjects. But the Korean 
soldiers, well drilled and equipped, soon became a 
match for the boldest of the pirates, and not only 
often drove them off with heavy loss, but pursued 
and exterminated them upon the sea. Three ports 
in the south — principal among them being Fusan — 
were declared to be open to honest Japanese traders 



1 



128 THE STORY OF KOREA 

or to Government missions, and the entry of Japanese 
into the kingdom otherwise than by one of these 
ports was forbidden. Some of these reforms were 
not accomplished during Taijo's reign, but in those 
of his sons and immediate successors. Taijo's own 
reign lasted only for seven years, when, being now 
far advanced in years, he made way for his son 
by abdicating. 

His early successors were all rulers who showed 
themselves worthy of their descent, and under them 
the country had both peace that was unbroken, save 
for the incursions of Japanese raiders, and prosperity. 
To some of them it still owes a deep debt of grati- 
tude. Tai jong (1418-50), the younger son of Taijo, 
and the third of the line to reign, first conceived 
and carried out the idea of movable copper types. 
In 1403, forty-seven years before the first printing 
from movable type was known in Europe, the King 
said to his attendants : 

" Whoever is desirous of governing must have a wide acquaintance 
with books, which alone will enable him to ascertain principles and 
perfect his own character and to attain to success in regulating his 
conduct, in ordering his family aright, in governing and tranquillis- 
ing the State. Our country lies beyond the seas, and but few books 
reach us from China. Block-cut works are apt to be imperfect, and 
it is, moreover, difficult thus to print all the books that exist. I desire 
to have types moulded in copper, with which to print all the books 
that I may get hold of, in order to make their contents widely known. 
This would be of infinite advantage. But as it would not be right 
to lay the burden of the cost upon the people, I and my relations 
and those of my distinguished officers who take an interest in the 
undertaking ought surely to be able to accomplish this." x 

To carry out the suggestion, the King contributed 
his own private treasure and furnished models for 
the types, and within a few months several hundred 

1 Satow, " Notes on Movable Types in Korea." Transactions of 
the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. x. 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 129 

thousand were cast. His two successors on the 
throne developed what he had done and caused new 
founts to be cast, which exceeded the first both in 
fineness of workmanship and in size, so much so 
that, in the words of a contemporary scholar, " it 
would be impossible to add to the perfection of 
the workmanship. Henceforward there will be no 
book left unprinted and no man who does not learn. 
Literature and religion will make daily progress and 
the cause of morality must gain enormously/' Not 
only books printed from these founts are still in 
existence, but even some of the very type cast by 
Tai jong. Printing from movable type made of clay 
as well as xylography had been long previously 
known in China, but the Koreans are entitled to the 
credit of having been the first to use the clearer 
and more durable metal type. 

The same sovereign displayed his readiness to 
sacrifice his own personal comfort for the benefit 
of his people in other ways than by devoting his 
treasure to the casting of type. In the year 1401, 
the first of his reign, there was famine in the land. 
The national alcoholic drink of the Koreans is, as is 
that of the Japanese, brewed from rice, and in order 
that all the grain might be spared for food, the King 
ordered that brewing should temporarily cease. 
When he found that his orders were not obeyed, 
he concluded that it was because drink was still 
served in the Court, and he therefore ordered that its 
use should cease even there. With this example 
before them, the people could no longer indulge 
themselves in what their sovereign abstained from, 
and his first orders were then readily obeyed. His 
son and successor, Se jong (1450-2), was a worthy 
follower of his great father. Great though the benefit 
conferred on his people by his father in his inven- 
tion of movable type and the diffusion of literature 

9 



130 THE STORY OF KOREA 

that followed, it was surpassed by what the son 
achieved in inventing, with the assistance of some of 
the literati of the Court, the Korean alphabet, the 
On-mun, which is pronounced by expert sinologues 
to be one of the most perfect alphabets in the world. 
The father's types were only used for the printing 
of Chinese ideographs, the knowledge of which is the 
necessary accomplishment, not only of every scholar 
but of every gentleman in the three far Eastern 
nations — China, Japan, and Korea — and a limited 
knowledge of which is an essential part of even an 
elementary education. Both Koreans and Japanese 
owed their first acquaintance with the art of writing 
to China, and in both countries all writing was, for 
many centuries, confined to the system of ideographs, 
which is all that the Chinese have to the present day. 
Its acquisition to a degree which enables the student 
to read anything but the most elementary books is 
a long and laborious task, demanding almost the 
whole of the first decade of a schoolboy's life, and 
many never go beyond the first steps. Women, 
almost universally, irrespective of rank or occupation, 
were also content with a very limited knowledge of 
the ideographs. To all these classic and the greater 
part of the current literature were sealed books. The 
Japanese eased the difficulty in some degree by the 
invention of their syllabaries, but the Korean king 
achieved a far more scientific and beneficial triumph 
by giving to his people an alphabet that was equally 
easy to acquire and apply. 

The seventh King, Sijo (1456-69), acquired the 
throne by deposing and murdering the rightful 
occupant, a boy, but made such amends for his crime 
by a vigorous reign, characterised by reforms as 
beneficial as they were drastic, that his crime is 
forgotten arid only his merits remembered by the 
Koreans, and the succession of able, upright, and 




M 
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P 

a, 



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6 
fc. 

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^T* tt"^ <^o TTTn^i^i" ! 



132 THE STORY OF KOREA 

active sovereigns of the Taijo line was only broken 
for the first time in 1494, when King Yunsan, the 
eleventh of the line, came to the throne, 102 years 
after the accession of the founder of the line. 

His mother, who was raised from the position 
of concubine to that of queen, was a woman of 
violent temper, who was degraded and banished from 
Court for having scratched the King's face in a fit 
of jealousy. She left to her son the legacy of 
avenging her, and his first act when he came to the 
throne at the age of twenty was to sentence to death, 
not only every one who had taken any part, no 
matter how insignificant or remote, in his mother's 
fall, but also, as was the custom at the time, all their 
families and households, relatives of any degree, 
wives, children, servants, and slaves. Even death 
was not a barrier against his anger. The sanctity 
of the tomb is in China and Korea tenfold what it 
is in Europe. No greater outrage can be committed 
than that of disturbing the remains of father or 
ancestor, and when this takes place, no matter how 
innocent of any share in it son or descendants may 
be, disaster and punishment are sure to fall on them. 
Disturbance of graves has always been one of the 
greatest obstacles to railway development in China, 
and would have been in Korea had the people dared 
to raise their hands or voices against the Japanese, 
to whom the introduction of railways into Korea 
is owing, and who constructed the principal lines 
in time of war. The young King opened the graves 
of his mother's persecutors, who had died before his 
accession, and dismembered and flung the fragments 
of their bodies on the dustheaps. Women, horses, 
dogs, and falcons alike appealed to his tastes, and the 
fairest of women and the best of animals were sought 
for and taken throughout the whole country. No one 
was safe against his lust, cruelty, and cupidity, and 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 133 

no ties of relationship were a bar to their gratifica- 
tion. At last, after eleven years of misrule, he was 
deposed and banished. His successor was his half- 
brother. At his accession a curious instance was 
furnished of the Oriental practice of extending the 
guilt of an offender to his family. The new King's 
wife was a daughter of one of the late King's 
creatures who had aided him in his misdeeds. He 
had fallen with his master, and the ministry now 
insisted that his daughter should share his fate, and 
the King, though devoted to his wife, was forced 
to submit and replace her by another. 

The new King inherited all the best qualities of his 
father as a governor and reformer, and the example 
of his own life had such effect on the people that 
his reign, which extended over forty years, earned 
the title of the " Golden Age of Korean morals." 

" The people, revolting from the excesses of the depraved King, 
took on a Puritan simplicity. Men and women walked on opposite 
sides of the street. If any article was dropped on the road, no one 
would touch it, but would leave it for the owner to recover. No one 
had to lock his doors at night." * 

Two important incidents of his reign have to be 
mentioned — the first, a Japanese defeat ; the second, 
a persecution of Buddhists. The Japanese settlers 
at Fusan broke out in riot, not without some reason, 
against the local Korean authorities, and for a short 
time gave in the district a very colourable imitation 
of the worst of the pirate raiders. The strong King 
and Government were prompt in their measures. The 
rioters, attacked on land and their flight cut off by 
sea, were exterminated. This was in 15 12. From 
this year until 1573 there was no diplomatic inter- 
course between Korea and Japan, and the commercial 
intercourse was almost nil, carried on by a few 

1 Hulbert, " History of Korea/' vol. i. p. 320. 



134 THE STORY OF KOREA 

straggling Japanese settlers who were rigidly con- 
fined to Fusan. It was in Japan the worst period 
of anarchy in its history, in which the whole Empire 
from end to end was seething in the worst passions 
and miseries of civil war. In 1573 order was 
restored under the dictatorship of Nobunaga, 1 and 
there was a commercial revival. The settlement at 
Fusan was extended and a brisker interchange of 
products originated, but still the Governments of the 
two countries kept aloof. 

It was in this reign that the repression or perse- 
cution of Buddhism reached its apogee. The 
literati, disciples of Confucius and profound students 
of the classics, had been gradually growing in 
influence and, through schools in every province, 
spread his doctrines and maxims among all classes. 
Buddhism was gradually eliminated ; the temples and 
monasteries were closed, the priests forbidden to 
enter the capital ; they were also forbidden to cele- 
brate marriages or funerals. Later kings who 
attempted to stem the tide of illiberality or to restore 
the ancient religion were deposed and exiled. 

The happy, golden days of Chung Jong were 
followed by a dark period when, in the minority of 
his successor, his mother governed as regent and 
was under the influence of unworthy favourites ; but 
we may pass over the interim until the year 1575. 
In that year a quarrel occurred between two powerful 
nobles of the Court, caused by one obtaining an 
honour to which the other considered he had better 
claims. All their retainers, friends, and dependents 
were drawn into the quarrel, and the result was the 
formation of two rival parties among the nobility, 
which germinated such bitterness that the rivalry 
became permanent, and the parties, afterwards sub- 
divided into four, have ever since survived. It is 
1 Vide, "The Story of Old Japan." 







>* 



_~V ■- > 



BUDDHIST MONASTERY AND MONKS. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 134. 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 135 

to their antagonism, which never permitted them to 
sink party spirit in national patriotism, which placed 
party membership far above merit and far below 
guilt, which was the fountain of as wretched mis- 
government as the world has ever seen, that all the 
subsequent woes of Korea are as much owing as to 
aught else. The two parties first formed adopted 
the titles of Easterners and Westerners. Some years 
later an incident occurred as trivial as any of those 
which during the last two centuries were the causes 
of the formation of the Irish factions, the members 
of which could never meet at fairs, races, funerals, 
or other celebrations dear to the heart of the Irish 
peasant, without fighting, or of the inter-regimental 
feuds that formerly existed between certain regi- 
ments of his Majesty's Army. The Irish faction 
quarrels were always local ; those of the British 
regiments concerned no one but themselves and the 
police, who often suffered while the soldiers were 
settling their differences in orthodox British style ; 
but the results of the Korean squabble were national. 
Two further rival Court parties were formed, who 
dubbed themselves Southerners and Northerners. 
The Southerners subsequently absorbed the East- 
erners, and while these two formed one party 
the Northerners split into two, distinguished as 
the Great and Little Northerners. The Great 
Northerners afterwards became involved in a con- 
spiracy against the King and the majority of its 
members suffered the death penalty, families being, 
as usual, included in the punishment of the head, so 
that the members of the party were almost extermi- 
nated, the few survivors seeking refuge in the ranks 
of the Little Northerners. There were then three 
parties in the Court, Westerners, Southerners, and 
Little Northerners, and this division lasted for nearly 
a hundred years. 



136 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Then a further cleavage took place, the cause — a 
dispute between a teacher and his pupil, both belong- 
ing to the Westerners, as to the proper wording of 
an epitaph — again being trivial in the extreme, 
strongly testifying to the absolute banalities which 
occupied the minds and were magnified into great 
questions by the Korean courtiers. The Westerners 
'were now divided into *" Elders " and " Juniors," 
the respective backers of the teacher and the pupil 
in their literary differences. The four parties as last 
constituted — " Elders," " Juniors," " Southerners," 
and " Little Northerners " — survived until the present 
generation, and their influence was not dead even 
at the annexation ; the most powerful were the 
Southerners and the Elders. Every noble was 
obliged to belong to one or other of the four, and 
the membership was always hereditary, the son join- 
ing the party to which his father had belonged in 
his lifetime. 1 

Political parties in other countries have always a 
well-defined political platform, and however much 
their members may be inwardly influenced by the 
possession or expectation of well-paid offices, out- 
wardly they are influenced solely by what each con- 
siders the good of the country. No such shallow 
pretence ever actuated or was ever professed by the 
Korean politicians. The sole object of all parties was 
office, and as all offices were in the gift of the King 
the attainment of his favour was a means to office. 
No merit, no ability, no national service on the part 
of the holder ever stood in the way of a member 
of an opposite party endeavouring to oust him by 
fair means or by foul, by assassination, by false 
charges supported by suborned evidence, or by 
bribery of the King's concubines or relatives. One 
illustration only need be quoted. It will be told in 

1 Dallet, " Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree," vol. i. introduction. 



CHOSEN— FIRST PERIOD 137 

the next chapter how, when Korea lay prostrate at the 
feet of the Japanese invaders, when her King was 
a fugitive and her capital occupied by the enemy, 
when her future, shrouded in apparently hopeless 
darkness, seemed to be that of a Japanese province, 
the entire outlook was changed and the country saved 
by the bravery and genius of one admiral. 1 It might 
have been expected that the nation would as one 
man have acclaimed the hero who had saved them, 
and that no party spirit would have stood in the 
way of heaping on him the honours he had so well 
deserved. Not so. He was not of the party who 
were around the King, who, while he was fighting 
on the seas, were cowering and quibbling far away 
from the enemy amidst the comforts of the Court. 
The King's jealousy was stimulated against him, and 
the reward which the Nelson of Korea received for 
his great services was that of reduction to the ranks 
of common seamen. The country had afterwards to 
pay dearly for the miserable ingratitude of the King 
and the political malignity of the courtiers. 

If the " outs " were unscrupulous in their methods 
of ousting the " ins," the latter were equally so in 
their own defence. They rigorously excluded their 
rivals from access to the King and availed themselves 
of every pretext to condemn them to death or exile. 
Whether an attempt to oust the " ins " failed or 
succeeded, the result in one respect was the same, 
no mercy was shown to the losers. The Confucian 
maxim that " the same canopy of Heaven cannot 
shelter the son or servant of an injured father or 
master and his wrongdoer " was even more pre- 
dominant in Korean than in Japanese ethics, and 
the vendetta, carried to its most bitter end, was not 
the least of the national ills that followed on the 

1 Vide, p. 168. 



138 THE STORY OF KOREA 

party system. The son of a murdered or exiled father 
was bound by the most sacred obligations of religion 
and honour to see that his enemy met with the same 
fate. The whole foundation of religion, now that 
Buddhism was dispossessed of all its hold, was the 
worship of ancestors, and whosoever did not avenge 
the wrongs of his father was forsworn, had forfeited 
his right to bear his name. 

" The noble who lost life or office through the machinations of an 
enemy bequeathed the duty of revenge to his descendants. Often 
he put upon them an outward symbol of their oath. He would, for 
example, give to his son a coat with the order never to disrobe 
himself of it till the vengeance was taken. The son wore it always, 
and if he died before his task was accomplished, he, in his turn, 
transmitted it to his son on the same condition. It is no uncommon 
thing to see nobles clad in rags which, for two or three generations, 
have night and day reminded them of the debt of blood that has to 
be paid before the souls of their ancestors can be at rest." * 

The vendetta, with its inexorable claims, con- 
tributed no small quota to the political distractions 
that ensued from the never-ending party squabbles, 
and combined with them to render efficient govern- 
ment impossible. 

1 Dallet, " Histoire de TEglise de Coree," vol. i. introduction. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION : THE FIRST STAGE 

We have now arrived at that period in her history at 
which Korea may be said to have started on her 
downward path. For two centuries she had been 
governed by a dynasty of sovereigns who furnished 
many strong and capable rulers ; and though they 
always acknowledged themselves to be and acted as 
the vassals of China, they at the same time claimed 
and exercised the rights and privileges of perfectly 
independent sovereigns, both in the administration 
of their own kingdom and in their relations with 
Japan, the only foreign country beside China with 
which they were acquainted. Throughout these two 
centuries Korea had enjoyed peace that was only 
interrupted by the occasional raids of Japanese 
pirates, which, however disastrous to the localities 
which suffered from them, were insignificant from 
a national point of view. She had made great 
advances in civilisation and prosperity. Polite learn- 
ing, as typified in the knowledge of the Chinese 
classics, was universal among the higher classes, while 
among the lower many of her artisans had attained a 
high degree of technical and artistic skill. Both 
her agricultural and fishing industries were sources of 
considerable wealth, and her people, homogeneous, 
industrious, intelligent, and tranquil, lived in physical 
comfort and security. 

Peace, however, if it had its blessings, had also its 
national disadvantages, one of which was that the 



139 



i 



140 THE STORY OF KOREA 

military system had from 1 disuse and neglect fallen into 
a state of utter inefficiency. The whole people were 
included in two classes, and two classes only — on one 
side the nobles and on the other the commoners, who 
were mere serfs, the property of the nobles, to be dis- 
posed of at their will, as freely as any of their inani- 
mate possessions. The nobles were solely occupied in 
political intrigue, those who were in the favour of 
the King and held office for the time being striving 
to retain it, and those who were not giving all their 
thought, energy, and time to ousting their more 
fortunate compeers. Patriotism was sacrificed to the 
selfish desire of personal aggrandisement, and, relying 
on the long -continued immunity from foreign aggres- 
sion and, as an ultimate safeguard, on the protection 
of the suzerain China, the national defences were per- 
mitted to fall into the lowest abysses of decay. City 
walls and castles were unrepaired. The national 
militia was untrained and unequipped. Formerly 
every province had its own annual training under com- 
petent officers, but now the men were only assembled 
at long intervals in small force in their nearest towns 
or villages, where neither officers nor men had any 
opportunity of learning the science and duties of an 
army. That the Koreans retained no small degree of 
the military spirit and courage of which they had 
given so many proofs in the past ; that they possessed 
sailors not only bold and skilful but with tactical 
and inventive genius, they were soon to show ; but no 
country suddenly called upon to face an invasion 
of a powerful foe was ever less prepared to meet 
it than was Korea when that which we are now 
about to describe burst upon her. 

Japan was at this time governed, in the name of 
her Emperor, by the regent Hideyoshi, the greatest 
and ablest of all the military adventurers who 
throughout seven centuries usurped the administrative 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 141 

functions of the Empire and kept their legitimate 
sovereigns in impotent seclusion in their palaces at 
Kioto. A man who had risen from the very lowest 
class of the people, the son of one of the humblest 
of peasants, and in his own youth a groom, he had 
by courage and genius raised himself to the position 
of the highest subject in the Empire, who held un- 
challenged in his own hands all the power and 
authority of a supreme Governor. For three cen- 
turies Japan had been torn from end to end by civil 
war, carried on with merciless, even savage, cruelty. 
From 1333, when the Hojos fell, till 1590, when 
Hideyoshi finally triumphed over the last of the great 
feudal barons who had dared to oppose him, and, 
seated on what was only not a throne in name, had 
brought every fief throughout the country under his 
undisputed sway, it may safely be said that peace 
had been unknown within her border. Whatever 
Germany suffered throughout the Thirty Years War 
in the miseries of her people and the devastation 
and ruin of her fields and cities finds its parallel 
in what Japan suffered, not for thirty but for over 
two hundred and fifty years. But the miseries of the 
people had their counterbalancing advantages in the 
influence war exerted on the national character. 

As the Koreans were now, so had the mass of the 
Japanese people been serfs in the past ; and they 
were again, under the influence of long, unbroken 
peace within their own borders and immunity from 
foreign aggression, destined to become once more 
little better than abject serfs, whose lives and 
property were alike at the mercy of feudal chiefs 
who knew no mercy when it clashed with their own 
interests or selfish pleasures. But at this time the 
Japanese were not only a nation of soldiers but one 
of veterans, inured to warfare and masters of its 
science. In the past, as it was to be again in the 



142 THE STORY OF KOREA 

future, soldiers were a limited and highly privileged 
class. Only one small section of the people were 
permitted to wear arms or expected to use them even 
in the highest duty of a citizen, the defence of king 
and country. But the wastage in the civil wars 
of those who were soldiers by descent had thrown 
the ranks open to peasants and artisans, even to the 
despised traders, whose physique, courage, and ambi- 
tion qualified them for military service, and all three 
classes had given ample evidence — just as they have 
done in the present generation — that they only re- 
quired training and opportunity to become converted 
into as formidable fighting men as were those who 
had inherited the spirit of soldiers from a long line 
of military ancestors and were stimulated by the 
pride of caste and rank. Hideyoshi could call to 
his standard an army whose efficiency and strength 
would have been a legitimate pride to any general in 
the world, and he had abundance of experienced 
officers devoted to his service, many of whom had, 
as he himself, risen from the ranks. 

As soon as his own future was secured, Hideyoshi 
made endeavours to induce Korea to resume the 
time-honoured custom of sending tribute -bearing 
embassies to Japan. In 1587 he accredited as his 
envoy for this purpose a retainer, named Yuyaji, of 
the Feudal Lord of Tsushima, who proceeded with 
a retinue to Seoul ; but the choice was an unfortunate 
one, and the brusque demeanour of the envoy, together 
with the presumptuous tone of his master's letter 
which he carried with him, so disgusted the Koreans 
that they peremptorily refused to entertain the sug- 
gestion of an embassy from themselves. They said 
the journey was too long and too dangerous. The 
Japanese envoy on his return to his own country 
paid dearly for his uncouthness as a diplomatist and 
the failure of his mission ; for not only he but, 



HIDEYOSHIS INVASION 143 

according to the custom of the day both in Japan and 
Korea in the case of offences against the State, all 
his family were put to death. 

A second mission was sent in the following year, 
the envoy this time being Yoshitoki, the Feudal Lord 
of Tsushima, the hereditary chief of his unfortunate 
predecessor, a young noble whose tact and courtesy 
seem to have been as marked as those of his re- 
tainer were the reverse. When he arrived at Seoul he 
was told informally that no favourable answer could 
be given to his request until certain Korean renegades 
in Japan who had acted as pilots and guides to 
Japanese pirates in their raids on the Korean coasts 
were surrendered. The envoy promptly sent for them 
to Japan. Eleven were brought over and submitted 
to the tender mercies of their own authorities, from 
whom they received a very short shrift. Then the 
Korean Government became all smiles, and consented 
that the old custom should be revived and that an 
embassy, properly accredited, should accompany 
Yoshitoki on his return to Japan. 

All these negotiations occupied considerable time ; 
for it was not till the spring of 1590 that the 
embassy, which included three ambassadors and a 
retinue of three hundred persons, and generally was 
on a scale of becoming splendour, started. Its 
journey from Seoul to Kioto, which can now be 
performed in less than three days, occupied three full 
months. Hideyoshi was, at the time of its arrival, 
occupied in the last of his domestic campaigns — the 
subjugation of the Hojo of Odowara, 1 the last of the 
territorial barons who refused to recognise his dicta- 
torship until compelled to do so by force of arms, 
but soon returned to Kioto. Even then the ambas- 

1 The Hojo of Odowara are not to be confounded with the regents 
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Though of the same 
name, they were of different families and quite different positions. 



144 THE STORY OF KOREA 

sadors, whose mission had been so desired by the 
parvenu, were not admitted to his presence, and it 
was not till five months had passed from their arrival 
that a formal audience was granted to them. 

When at last the audience was granted, Hideyoshi 
acted in a manner which outraged all the ambas- 
sadors' ideas, not only of the courtesy that was due 
to them as the personal representatives of the 
sovereign of a friendly State but of ordinary pro- 
priety, and shocked even his own courtiers. To 
his discourtesy at the audience he at first added a 
refusal to send a written reply to the letter which 
the ambassadors had borne from their King, and it 
was only after much persuasion by his own ministers 
that he was induced to write one. Even then it had 
to be returned to him for modification, its language 
being so offensive that the ambassadors refused to 
receive it ; and in its final form it was vulgar in 
its glorification of Hideyoshi's career, which was com- 
pared to " the rising sun illuminating the whole 
earth," and offensive to Korea in the open threats 
that it contained not only to Korea but to her suze- 
rain, who was to her as " a father to his son." Its 
closing words were : 

" I will assemble a mighty host, and invading the country of the 
great Ming, I will fill with the hoar frost from my sword the whole 
sky over the four hundred provinces. Should I carry out this 
purpose, I hope that Korea will be my vanguard. Let her not fail 
to do so, for my friendship with your honourable country depends 
solely on your conduct when I lead my army against China." * 



1 This and the following chapter are mainly founded on Dr. 
Aston' s history of the invasion, published in the Transactions of 
the Asiatic Society of Japan, vols, vi., ix., and xi., and on the letters 
of the Jesuit priests, summarised by Charlevoix and in Crasser.' s 
" History of the Church in Japan," though all other available 
authorities have been consulted. Quotations not otherwise noted are 
from Dr. Aston's work, 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 145 

The Korean ambassadors, slaves to the most punc- 
tilious etiquette, courteous to the utmost limits in 
all their own proceedings, and accustomed to the 
dignified ceremonial of the Chinese Court, returned 
to their own country, burning with indignant resent- 
ment. They had come to Japan at Hideyoshi's 
pressing invitation. They had revived the ancient 
custom of offering tribute. They had brought with 
them sincere protestations of friendship from their 
sovereign, and they had met with nothing but rude- 
ness. Nor was their indignation lessened when they 
discovered, as they did during their stay, that jail 
they had suffered was at the hands, not, as they 
imagined, of a King the equal in birth and rank of 
their own sovereign, but of a low-born parvenu who, 
however powerful in fact, held only the office of 
regent in his own country. They were convinced 
and reported to their Government on their return 
that Hideyoshi meant war, that the only means by 
which it could be averted were by Korea allying 
herself with him against her suzerain, and placing 
at his disposal their country as a highway for his 
troops and their own military and naval resources 
in co-operation with his in whatever operations he 
might undertake. This was a course that the Korean 
code of morality would have considered sacrilege. 
Hideyoshi's proposals were rejected without hesita- 
tion, and the rejection was not softened by the closing 
words of the reply sent to his letter, in which his 
project of invading China was compared to 
"measuring the ocean in a cockle-shell or a bee 
trying to sting a tortoise through its shell." 

Hideyoshi has been very justly called the Napoleon 
of Japan. He possessed both military and adminis- 
trative genius of the highest order, and his own 
merits and strength of character carried him, while 
still comparatively a young man, from a station in 

10 



146 THE STORY OF KOREA 

life far below that of Napoleon to the very highest 
office in the State to which a subject can attain, an 
office which made him de facto the absolute ruler of 
the Empire. His vanity and ambition were equally 
boundless. He had now brought all his own country 
to his feet. No one now dared to question his will. 
All the proud nobles of the Imperial Court who 
traced their descent to the gods of heaven, all the 
great feudal princes, many of them men of great 
ability, all except those who owed their rank and 
domains to himself, men of long descent, hitherto 
accustomed to exercise in their fiefs an unquestioned 
semi-sovereignty, now bent their knees before him 
and rendered reverential obedience to his dictates. 
He was a keen judge of men, and possessed the 
faculty of discovering the best of them and binding 
them to his own service by the chains of gratitude 
and pride, in some instances, perhaps, of fear. He 
had amassed immense wealth, which he used to build 
palaces worthy of an emperor for his own residence, 
castles for his security, and temples in which the 
gods should be honoured in his name. Mindful of 
his own origin and the privations of his childhood 
and youth, he was ever solicitous for the welfare 
of the common people, who now under his rule en- 
joyed, for the first time for generations, full security 
of life, liberty, and property, and who ascribed all 
they had to him. He seemed to have all that Heaven 
could give to man, and he had won it all before he 
had passed his fiftieth year. But his ambition was 
not yet satisfied. His vanity still required new 
material for its gratification. 

The traditions of the Empress Jingo's invasion 
of Korea were implicitly accepted by the Japanese as 
historical facts. The glory of that exploit had been 
given to the son whom she carried in her womb 
during the invasion. The period of the invasion was 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 147 

always mentioned by Japanese historians, not as that 
of the Empress Jingo but as that of " the Emperor 
in the womb," and he is still worshipped throughout 
the length and breadth of Japan as Hachiman, the 
god of war. In every town and village there tare 
temples in his honour, and no soldier ever departs 
for the field without previously imploring the divine 
protection of the god. Hideyoshi aspired to be 
deified after his death and worshipped by generations 
to come as the Shin-Hachiman, the new god of 
war, whose worship should supplement if not sup- 
plant that of the old god. His title to that honour 
would be best — indeed, it could only be — established 
by a foreign conquest, by causing the glory of Japan 
to shine beyond the seas, and the only countries 
where that end could be attained were Korea and 
China. Years before he had reached his pinnacle 
of fame and power he had proposed the conquest of 
Korea as a stepping-stone to the conquest of China 
to Nobunaga, his patron and the founder of his 
fortune, promising that he would bring the three 
countries, Japan, China, and Korea, under one crown, 
" as easily as a man rolls up a piece of matting 
and carries it under his arm." His patron was now 
dead, and Hideyoshi could carry out his plans to his 
own sole glory. 

Important considerations of statecraft contributed 
to personal ambition in urging him on his way. 
While not forgetting himself, he had been most 
generous in rewarding those who had fought for him 
with the confiscated spoils of his beaten enemies. 
He could not, however, reward all the immense 
number of those who had claims on him according 
to their estimates of their own merits, nor endow 
all with the fiefs that made them territorial princes 
or nobles, and all the available land in Japan had 
been bestowed. Domestic peace seemed to be 



148 THE STORY OF KOREA 

ensured for the future, and the soldier's occupation 
was gone. Idleness would soon breed discontent 
among those who had reason to draw unfavourable 
comparison between their own and their more for- 
tunate fellows' lots in life ; and it might even happen 
that their arms would, in the end, be raised against 
their old leader — if not against himself against his 
son when he was gone. A foreign conquest would 
destroy this peril. There would be ample occupation 
for the soldiers till it was achieved, ample lands to 
reward them afterwards, even to their wildest ex- 
pectations, and all temptation to restlessness on their 
part would be removed. Finally, there was the 
question of the native Christians. 

It was the time of Christianity's greatest successes 
in Japan. Introduced by St. Francis Xavier fifty 
years previously, and sedulously propagated by a 
band of the ablest and most devoted missionaries 
that the world has ever seen, it had had a continuous 
career of triumph ; and the converts of all classes 
in life, from great princes of the land down to the 
humblest peasants, were by this time said to number 
over 600,000. Among them were several of Hide- 
yoshi's ablest and most trusted officers and many 
thousands of his best soldiers. Hideyoshi had as 
yet made no attempt to check the spread of Chris- 
tianity — the first martyrdom of foreign priests and 
native converts took place in 1596 — but he was 
evidently becoming somewhat uneasy at its possi- 
bilities as a political factor, especially in the southern 
island of Kiusiu, where it was in greatest force. 
Kiusiu would be the base of an invading fleet and 
army for Korea. The Kiusiu troops, recruited mainly 
from Christians, would be in the van of the invading 
army, and whether they perished or conquered and 
settled in Korea, Japan would equally be freed from 
the dangers of their presence. This was, according 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 149 

to the Jesuit missionaries, the chief among all the 
incentives that urged the enterprise on Hideyoshi. 
If another incentive was wanted to complete all that 
have been mentioned, it was furnished by the rejec- 
tion of his overtures by Korea and the contemptuous 
reference to his ambitious project of invading China. 
The Jesuits were hardly more complimentary to his 
wisdom than were the Koreans. They called it 
" a foolish and temerarious enterprise, infinitely 
hazardous, if not morally impracticable, Japan being 
hardly one handful of earth in respect of the vast 
Empire of China." 

Once the determination was taken, Hideyoshi lost 
no time in beginning preparations with his usual 
energy and all-seeing prudence. A campaign against 
Satsuma, the most southern and one of the most 
powerful fiefs in Japan, four years previously, had 
taught him the requisites of an overseas expedition, 
and the lessons he had then learned were now turned 
to good account. A base was established at Nagoya, 
the modern Karatsu, now a prosperous town with a 
great trade in coal, with a well -sheltered harbour, 
on the western coast of Kiusiu. At this place an 
army, which, counting camp followers, numbered over 
300,000 men, was soon collected, and Hideyoshi in 
person supervised all its equipment on the spot. It 
was his original intention to have taken the chief 
command in the field himself, but at the last ill-health 
prevented him carrying out his intention. Much of 
his life had been passed in the field, where he had 
shared the privations of his soldiers. But when not 
in the field he had given way to the most reckless 
indulgence in the grossest sensuality, and drink, 
gluttony, and debauchery were prominent among his 
vices. Alternate privation and indulgence were now 
beginning to tell on him, though he was still far 
from being an old man, and his physical condition 



150 THE STORY OF KOREA 

was such as to inhibit further active service. The 
command was therefore shared between two generals, 
Kato Kiyomasa and Konishi Yukinaga, who are them- 
selves two of the most interesting figures in Japanese 
history. 

Both were men who, like Hideyoshi himself, had 
risen from the ranks. The story of the lives of both 
are little less romantic than his own. Konishi was 
the son of a druggist at Sakai, the grejat commer- 
cial port of Japan in the days of Hideyoshi. In 
his boyhood he was sent by his father as an acolyte 
to the celebrated Buddhist temple of Miidera, and 
one day while he was there Hideyoshi, when out 
hunting, called at the temple to rest. The acolyte 
was ordered to serve tea to him, and the address 
and intelligence which he showed in doing so — he 
gradually increased the heat of successive cups of 
tea as he served them — so captivated Hideyoshi that 
he asked the monks to give the boy to him. Nothing 
that the great tyrant asked for could be refused, 
and from that day the boy was in his personal service. 
His abilities and his devotion proved the unerring 
judgment of his master. His rise was rapid, and at 
the age of twenty-three he was general in command 
of the first division of the army in Korea. Kato was 
very much older ; he was already high in rank in 
Hideyoshi's military service when Konishi was a boy 
at the temple of Miidera. But he was the son of 
a blacksmith in Hideyoshi's native village in Owari. 
Perhaps he or his father was able to render gome 
kindness to Hideyoshi in his boyhood, when, before 
he was advanced to the position of a groom, he 
was a hawker of firewood ; but, whatever the reason, 
Hideyoshi, as soon as he began to rise in life, took 
the young blacksmith into his service, and as he 
developed into a brave and capable soldier he soon 
rose to high military rank. It is curious that he 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 151 

achieved what was his great master's strongest 
ambition, but which he failed to realise — he was 
deified after his death. 1 

Konishi was converted to Christianity, and was 
not only one of the most fervent disciples of the 
Jesuit missionaries, but one of their most influential 
protectors in the dark days of persecution. Kato, 
on the other hand, was an ardent Buddhist, and hated 
Christians and their doctrine with a bitter hatred. 
These two commanded the first divisions of the 
Japanese army that were landed in Korea. That of 
Konishi was composed entirely of Christians ; that 
of Kato was blessed by Buddhist priests and fought 
under Buddhist banners. Religion, therefore, added 
its quota to the rivalry between the two generals 
and their men. 

Simultaneously with the organisation of the troops 
a large fleet of transports had been prepared at 
the base. Every territorial prince whose fief bor- 
dered on the coast was ordered to furnish ships 
proportionate in number and tonnage to his revenue, 
and to man them every fishing village was called 
upon to provide ten men for every hundred houses 
it contained. All was ready, " down to the last gaiter 
button," before the end of May, 1592, and on the 
24th of that month Konishi sailed with the first 
division. The Koreans had full warning of the fate 
that threatened them, but had not utilised to the 
best the interval that was given to them to prepare 
for their defence. Long -continued peace had un- 
fitted them for war. They neglected to repair or 
strengthen their castles, their troops were ill- 
organised and equipped ; and while the Japanese 

1 Kato in his lifetime zealously expounded the cause of the Bud- 
dhists, especially of the Nichiren sect against Christians, and he was 
rewarded by having temples erected in his honour after his death 
both at Kumanmoto, his own fief, and elsewhere. 



152 THE STORY OF KOREA 

were now accustomed to the use of firearms, the 
Koreans had still only the bows and arrows and the 
spears of old days. The first firearm, in fact, that 
they had seen was presented to them by Hideyoshi's 
envoy, Yoshitoki, on the occasion of his final mission. 
On the other hand, the Koreans, as will be seen here- 
after, were better sailors and had better ships than 
the Japanese ; but with inconceivable negligence they 
made no use of their advantages in this respect a,t 
the beginning of the campaign, and both Konishi and 
Kato, who quickly followed him, were permitted to 
land in the south-east of Korea without opposition. 
The castle at Fusan, where Konishi landed, formed 
an exception to the general unpreparedness of the 
Korean defences. The port was the old gateway 
to Korea from Japan, the nearest to the Japanese 
shores, and the first appearance of the invaders was 
looked for at it. The castle was under the command 
of a brave and energetic officer and held a garrison 
of 6,000 men, who were quickly reinforced by others 
from the surrounding district as soon as the approach 
of the enemy's fleet was discerned through the haze 
that hung lightly over the sea. The deep trenches 
surrounding the castle were filled with water, and 
all the approaches from the river bank and from 
the beach were thickly sown with caltrops to impale 
cavalry. On the walls more than 2,000 engines were 
planted for hurling darts and cartouch shots. 
Konishi's force had been transported in 800 vessels, 
so that it may be assumed to have amounted to 
24,000 men, and this estimate does not much differ 
from the precise figures given by Japanese historians, 
on the exactness of which but little reliance can be 
placed, Japanese having, throughout the whole of 
their early history, been much given to numerical 
exaggeration in military affairs. When the whole 
army had been landed without opposition near the 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 153 

castle, Konishi, undaunted by the formidable obstacle 
that was before him, summoned the Governor to 
surrender. The Governor answered that he could do 
nothing without orders from the King his master, 
whereupon Konishi gave orders for the assault on 
the following morning. It was delivered at four 
o'clock and continued throughout the day, the 
Koreans making a brave resistance and successfully 
repelling the first attempt. But the firearms of the 
Japanese, altogether new to the Korean soldiers, pre- 
vailed over their primitive weapons, and on a second 
attempt the Japanese succeeded in scaling the walls, 
from which the defenders had been swept by 
musketry fire ; and, once there, all was soon over 
and the Japanese were masters of the fortress. Their 
Christianity did not prevent them putting the 
Governor and his soldiers to the sword. After two 
days' rest the army advanced against the town of 
Tongnai, on the River Naktong, about five miles 
from Fusan, a still stronger fortress than the latter, 
garrisoned by 20,000 men, among whom, it is said, 
were the best troops that Korea could muster. If 
that were so, they must have been dispirited by the 
capture of Fusan or panic -struck by the musketry 
fire, for they made but a feeble resistance. The 
fight lasted only three hours. Konishi himself was 
the first to mount the scaling ladders that were placed 
against the walls, and was so well seconded by his 
men that more than 5,000 Koreans were killed, while 
the Japanese loss was only 100 killed and 400 
wounded. With this trifling loss they were masters 
of the strongest town in Southern Korea, one also 
that was well stocked both with weapons and pro- 
visions. The moral effect of these blows following 
each other in rapid succession, both within a few 
days from the landing, was even more valuable than 
the capture of the forts. 



154 THE STORY OF KOREA 

There were still five fortresses on the road between 
Fusan and the capital, Seoul, all of which were 
capable of defence, but when Konishi, not permitting 
his troops to delay either for rest or plunder, marched 
straight to the capital, each was hastily evacuated on 
his approach and taken possession of by the Japanese 
without resistance. The second division landed at 
Fusan four days later than Konishi's, and Kato, the 
general in command, finding nothing left to be done 
by him there, also started in the race for Seoul, not 
following in the direct track of Konishi but taking 
the more circuitous eastern road. This led by Kyun 
Ju, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Silla, ja 
city attractive to the Japanese both from its wealth 
and from its historical associations. It was taken 
by storm, and Kato then pushed on by forced marches 
and joined Konishi near the town of Tyung Chiu, 
which lies on the north bank of a river, a branch of 
the Han, almost exactly half way on the central road 
from Fusan to Seoul. 

A few miles to the south of the river the road 
crosses a steep and narrow mountain pass, which 
could have been easily held by a small force against 
an advancing army, but it was neglected by the 
Koreans, who concentrated all their strength at 
Tyung Chiu. It was a fortified town, and even after 
the pass had been abandoned a strong resistance 
might have been made behind its walls or on the 
river bank ; but the Korean army, which the King, 
recovering from the sloth that had hitherto charac- 
terised him, had dispatched when he saw that t his 
capital was threatened, consisted mainly of cavalry 
— the Jesuits gave its numbers as from sixty to seventy 
thousand men, " almost all cavalry " — and its leader 
thought it would prove most formidable in the wide 
plain that lay between the pass and the river, and 
there, in a position with a deep river in his rear that 
presaged absolute ruin for his whole army if defeated, 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 155 

he determined to meet the invader. The two divisions 
of Konishi and Kato were now together, and their 
united strength amounted to forty thousand men. 
Konishi's division was in the van. Kato had claimed 
this honour, but Konishi, having hitherto held the lead, 
refused to yield it, and Kato, indignant though he 
was, was obliged to submit. The relations between 
the two commanders had always been strained, and 
their former differences were now still further em- 
bittered by jealousy on Kato's part and by the con- 
sciousness on Konishi's that Kato was endeavouring 
to minimise the victories he had won. On this point 
the narrative of the Jesuits cannot be implicitly 
accepted. Konishi was their darling hero, their 
greatest convert, their mainstay in securing Hide- 
yoshi's continued tolerance, and they were bound to 
him alike by strong ties of gratitude for past services 
and by hopes for the future. Kato was their relent- 
less enemy and persecutor, so dreaded and hated by 
them that they spoke of him as " vir ter execrandas." 
There is, however, an undoubted historical foundation 
of fact for their description, which is as follows : 

" Konishi animated his men, saying they must either conquer or 
die ; he then ranged his troops in battalia, and forbade his officers 
to display their standards till the signal was given. Those of Korea 
on their side drew up all their squadrons in a half-moon, to surround 
the Japanese. Kato, seeing them closely engaged, instead of 
joining the army, drew aside, and resolved to let Konishi perish, or 
rescue him if there was any hazard of the day, and so gain the credit 
of the victory. But he was not at all in pain about it, for this brave 
general having given the signal, and the ensigns being now 
displayed, the van marched up to the attack, and broke through the 
enemy's squadrons. The combat was long and bloody, but the 
Korean horse, galled and frightened by the musquets, being rendered 
quite unserviceable, were obliged to save themselves at full speed. 
About eight thousand fell dead on the spot. Besides what were 
drowned in passing the River." x 



Crasset, " History of the Church in Japan," vol. i. 



156 THE STORY OF KOREA 

The news of this disaster — it was even worse than 
the Jesuits described — was quickly brought by the 
fugitives to the capital, and there the destruction of 
the last obstacle that lay between it and the advancing 
Japanese created, as was natural, a universal panic 
which extended from the Court downwards. It was 
true that the city was fortified and might be defended, 
but its walls were fourteen miles in circumference 
and there was no force left within them capable of 
manning so great an extent. The panic, too, had 
extended to the few soldiers who were there, and 
they were deserting their posts and sharing in the 
general exodus of the inhabitants. The King in 
despair determined to withdraw to the north himself, 
and though he first burnt all the magazines, his 
departure was so hurried that it became a flight : 

u With a retinue the scantinesss of which told a melancholy tale 
of desertion in the hour of danger and misfortune, the King made 
his first day's march, followed, as he passed along, by the lamenta- 
tions of the inhabitants, who complained that they were being 
abandoned to the mercy of the invaders. His household was 
mounted on farm horses, no food had been provided for the journey, 
and a drenching rain fell during the whole day. Wretched with 
fatigue and hunger, they reached their lodgings at Kaishung late at 
night, lighted by the glare of a public building which had been set 
on fire by the King's orders to deprive the Japanese of materials for 
rafts with which to cross the river which flows through the south of 
that city. Food had been provided here for the King and his suite, 
but the kitchen was invaded by hungry guards and attendants, and 
barely enough was saved for the King's supper. His less fortunate 
household had no food until the following day, when they were 
allowed to share with some soldiers their rations of boiled rice." 

Three days after the King's flight, both Konishi 
and Kato, who had marched by different routes from 
Tyung Chiu, the former still following the central 
high-road and the latter taking that which lay to 
the west, reached the capital and entered it without 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 157 

opposition, only twenty days after the first landing at 
Fusan, Konishi by the Eastern gate, and Kato, a few 
hours behind him, by the Southern gate. The whole 
march of more than three hundred miles from Fusan, 
during which one pitched battle and many skirmishes 
had been fought and three great fortresses stormed, 
was a race between the two rival commanders, and 
was accomplished in nineteen days by Konishi and 
in fifteen by a longer route by Kato. A large part 
of the town had been burned in the disorder which 
occurred between the King's departure and their own 
arrival, but enough of the buildings remained to 
enable the exhausted soldiers to be lodged and of 
provisions for them to be fed. The occupation of the 
city was effected with the utmost order. " The in- 
habitants suffered nothing either from the pride or 
greed of the conquerors ; for the general and all the 
officers of this army, who were Christians, and had 
almost nothing in common with heathen soldiers, had 
no difficulty in preserving discipline among their men. 
A garrison of Koreans could not have entered Seoul 
more peaceably than did the victorious Japanese." x 
This extract, of course, refers to Konishi's army, 
which was in full possession of the city before Kato 
came upon the scene. The Jesuits may be pardoned 
for describing the incident with some pride, for it is 
the only one of its kind which occurred throughout 
the whole war, and the fate of the garrisons of 
Fusan and Tongnai showed what even the Christian 
soldiers could do when provoked by resistance. 

For fifteen days the two divisions enjoyed a well- 
earned rest at Seoul, during which they were joined 
by other divisions which had landed later at Fusan 
and marched thence by the most western of the three 
roads that led to the capital, the last portion of 
which had been used by Kato. Hideyoshi's instruc- 
1 Charlevoix, " Histoire du Japon," vol. i. 



158 THE STORY OF KOREA 

tions were now received for the disposal of the whole 
force. The north-eastern province of Ham Gyong, 
the most mountainous and therefore presenting the 
greatest natural difficulties to an invading army, 
where the inhabitants were both the boldest and 
physically the strongest of all the Koreans, was 
assigned to Kato. Konishi was directed to continue 
his march northwards on the high-road from Seoul 
to the frontier of China, through the north-western 
provinces of Hoang Hai and Phyong An, while the 
other division commanders were to hold the metro- 
politan and southern provinces and maintain the lines 
of communication. Both the northern divisions were 
largely reinforced from the others, and that of 
Konishi was later on increased by the inclusion in 
his command of two other full divisions, those of 
Kuroda, feudal lord of Hizen, and of Yoshitoki, of 
Tsushima, the latter of whom, it will be remembered, 
was Hideyoshi's ambassador to Korea before the 
war. 

Both Konishi and Kato started on their northern 
march from Seoul together. Nearly thirty miles 
north of the capital the road is crossed by the River 
Injin, a tributary of the Han, the same river as that 
crossed at night in the glare of the burning building 
by the King in his precipitous flight with his retinue 
of concubines and eunuchs. Here the Koreans made 
another effort to stem the progress of the advancing 
victors. Another large army was gathered on the 
northern bank, and all the boats on the river of 
every class and size were collected there, not one 
being left on the southern bank. There was no 
ford, the current was rapid and the river wide, and 
when the Japanese arrived at the southern bank all 
they could do was to stare helplessly at their enemy's 
great camp which was spread before them on the 
fiats across the river. Here they might have been 




PALACE GATEWAY, SEOUL. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To tace p. 158. 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 159 

indefinitely held in check and harassed by guerilla 
attacks on their flanks, had it not been for the miser- 
able ineptitude of the Korean commanders. The 
Japanese feigned a retreat, and a section of the 
Koreans exultingly crossed the river in their boats 
to pursue them. Then the Japanese turned, drove 
their erstwhile pursuers in headlong rout before them, 
and seized their boats ; but even before they crossed 
the river the remainder of the Korean army on the 
northern bank, readily following an example that was 
set them by their generals, broke and fled northwards. 

The two Japanese generals now separated. Kato 
turned to the right on his long march into Ham 
Gyong, the province which extends for three hundred 
miles along the Japan Sea, where he had to wage 
a continuous guerilla war, and where his soldiers had 
to suffer, far away from their base, the privations of 
a winter of a severity that was entirely new to them. 
Konishi continued on his direct northward march, 
where physical difficulties were comparatively few 
but w r here the prospect of glory, in the capture of 
important cities, the pursuit of the King, and the 
possible invasion of China, was incomparably greater. 
It has been said that the choice of their respective 
spheres of operations was decided between the two 
commanders by drawing lots, their relations having 
become so strained that it was impossible for them 
to continue in co-operation ; but the more plausible 
explanation is that they acted under the instructions of 
Hideyoshi wiiich have been already quoted, who, in 
his exultation at Konishi's earliest successes, the pride 
of which made him regard Konishi " as his own son 
restored to life," gave to him the sphere that was 
of highest promise. 

Leaving for the present Kato and his division to 
pursue their toilsome and adventurous march into 
the wild mountains of Ham Gyong, we shall foilow T 



160 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the more important and dramatic fortunes of Konishi. 
Marching ( across the provinces of Hoang Hai, he 
reached the southern bank of the River Tatong six 
days after he parted from Kato. Here he found him- 
self in a somewhat similar position to that which 
had previously confronted the united divisions at the 
River Injin. The Koreans had gathered another 
army, strong in numbers if in nothing else, on the 
northern bank under the walls of the town of 
Phyong An, in which the fugitive King still took 
refuge. Phyong An lies about fifty miles from the 
mouth of the river. It was and is a large, prosperous, 
and populous city, a natural fortress in its situation, 
and its natural advantages were supplemented by 
all that the engineering skill of the day could effect 
with lofty walls and battlements. Sentiment endeared 
it to the Korean heart, as it was the capital of the 
old kingdom of Korai and compared with it Seoul 
was but a mushroom. The river that flowed past 
it, one of the largest in Korea, was broad and swift. 
The Japanese had no boats, and though there were 
fords the Japanese knew nothing of their where- 
abouts. It could not be hoped that the Koreans 
would again permit themselves to be drawn into a 
similar trap to that which had proved their ruin 
at the River Injin, and the Japanese were, therefore, 
once more at a deadlock. 

The strength of Konishi's force, increased on the 
one hand by large reinforcements but on the other 
diminished by the guards of the line of communica- 
tion with Seoul, was now over thirty thousand men, 
and so little promising was the outlook that he began 
to prepare winter quarters for the whole of this 
force. He first, however, attempted negotiations, 
this being the third occasion during the campaign 
on which the Japanese had endeavoured to come to 
terms with their enemies. The circumstances of the 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 161 

present attempt contained so many elements of the 
picturesque that it has often been a cause of 
wonder to the present writer that they have not been 
eagerly seized as subjects by Japanese artists. Not 
even a single Japanese had the means of crossing 
the river. So one was sent, unarmed and alone, to 
the river's edge, where he planted a branch of a 
tree with a paper hanging to it, and waited. He 
was soon observed from the opposite bank and a 
boat was sent to inquire what he meant. A letter 
from Konishi to Ri Toku Kei, the Korean official with 
whom the negotiations of Hideyoshi's first envoys 
had been principally conducted, was given to the 
messenger asking for an interview to discuss the 
conditions of peace, and the interview was soon 
arranged. It took place, in full view of the rival 
armies on both sides, in mid-stream in two small 
boats moored alongside each other — both provided 
by the Koreans — and the parties to it were well 
chosen. On the one side was Ri Toku Kei, on the 
other Yoshitoki, the chief, and the monk Genso, 
one of the members of Hideyoshi's second Embassy, 
both of whom had been for two years in Seoul before 
the war. All three envoys were therefore well 
acquainted with each other and were personally on 
terms of close friendship. The Japanese demands 
were practically a repetition, in less discourteous 
terms, of those of Hideyoshi when at Kioto : " Let 
the Koreans provide a free passage for the Japanese 
armies through their country to China and all would 
be well with them." Neither the pusillanimity of 
their unworthy King, who now abandoned Phyong An 
and continued his northern flight, not staying this 
time till he reached the frontier town of Aichiu, nor 
their long unbroken series of defeats had, it was 
evident, destroyed the spirit of the Koreans nor 
damped their fealty to their suzerain China. Not 

11 



162 THE STORY OF KOREA 

only was an indignant refusal given to the demands, 
but the Japanese were told that as long as their 
forces were on Korean soil no proposal for peace on 
any terms would be entertained. 

The wisdom and generalship of the Koreans were 
in inverse ratio to their spirit and fealty. Again, as 
at the Injin, they lost patience, and quitted the safety 
of an impregnable stronghold to assume the offensive 
against an enemy whose incontestable superiority in 
hand-to-hand fighting on equal terms had been so 
often proved. They essayed a night assault on the 
Japanese camp, hoping to take it by surprise. The 
execution of this attempt Was as bad as its conception. 
Dawn had broken before the Koreans were across 
the river. Even then their first attack was successful, 
but the Japanese soon rallied, drove their assailants 
back to and across the river, and in the flight the 
fords were at last discovered to the Japanese. They 
were quickly utilised, and the Koreans, thoroughly 
disheartened by the failure of their sortie, fled out 
of the city by one gate almost as the Japanese 
entered it by another. Immense stores of grain were 
left for the victors, who were now amply provisioned 
and could wait in comfortable quarters till plans 
were completed for the invasion of China, to which, 
in their flush of triumph, they eagerly looked forward. 
So far the whole campaign had been an un- 
broken triumphal progress for the Japanese. They 
had overrun three-fourths of* Korea without meet- 
ing with a single reverse, and Hideyoshi, now 
believing in the realisation of his wildest flights of 
ambition, poured further troops into the peninsula 
and again thought of placing himself at the head 
of his armies and leading the advance into China. 
But the tide of good fortune was now destined to 
turn, and the Japanese to experience a series of 
disasters which nullified all their former triumphs 




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HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 163 

and forced upon them a retreat hardly less rapid 
than had been their victorious advance. 

No country in the world, not even excepting 
Switzerland or Japan, can be more adapted for 
guerilla warfare than Korea. It is all "a sea of 
mountains/' amidst which the Japanese, ignorant of 
the roads and paths — the land had not then been 
mapped out for them in advance by an army of 
highly trained spies as it was before their modern 
wars with China and Russia — frequently strayed and 
got lost and were at the mercy of ambushed archers 
or of spearsmen who burst on them in overwhelming 
numbers from the thick cover of the mountain forests. 
They had to depend largely on foraging for their 
supplies — Kato's army throughout its whole march, 
Konishi's from the time when the supplies of the 
Phyong An granaries began to run low — and their 
foraging parties were frequently cut off and never 
heard of again, and even when successful they 
carried out their work in such constant dread of 
attack that their nerve-tension had scarcely any rest. 

Through all the campaign the Koreans had shown 
no lack of courage. No matter how often defeated, 
they had always been found ready even to take the 
offensive against their foes, who, they knew, were far 
more effectively armed and drilled than themselves, 
and all the misfortunes they had suffered were due, 
not to the cowardice or weakness of the men but to 
the incompetence and rashness of the officers. 
Guerilla bands of peasants, maddened by the plunder- 
ing of their homesteads, by seeing their families left 
to starve by alien marauders who necessarily thought 
only of themselves, under the leadership and guidance, 
not of aristocratic officers but of their own fellows, 
everywhere hung on the outskirts of the Japanese 
armies in every district of the country, and by the 
losses which they inflicted shattered all the confidence 



164 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in their invincibility with which their early successes 
in the storming of castles and in pitched battles had 
imbued the Japanese. Few Oriental nations suffer 
from what is called " nerves/' the Japanese perhaps 
the least of all. A Japanese will bear without a 
tremor the pain of an agonising surgical operation 
without an anaesthetic, the very thought of which 
would make the bravest Englishman quail, and he 
will face and go through an ordeal, where death 
momentarily threatens him, with the unruffled forti- 
tude of the Stoic. But even the iron nerves of the 
Samurai in Korea, whose whole lives had been passed 
in war, began to give way under the constant strain 
to which they were subjected by the Korean guerillas, 
and instances began to occur in which even superior 
numbers did not enable them to hold their ground. 
Nor were the Korean successes confined entirely to 
the guerilla attacks. An assault made by ten 
thousand Japanese on the town of Chinju in the 
south of the province of Kyong-Syang was beaten 
back with a loss of more than half their number, 
though the defending garrison numbered less than 
three thousand ; and on the other hand, the town of 
Kyun Ju, the old Sillan capital, taken by Kato at 
the very outset of his campaign, was retaken by 
storm by the Koreans. 

It was at the siege of this town by the Koreans 
that the bomb made its first recorded appearance in 
the history of the world. Hitherto the Koreans had 
no firearms, and had suffered heavily, both in actual 
loss and morale, from the fire of the practised 
Japanese musketeers. Now the tables were turned. 
The Koreans had learnt the use of powder, and one 
of them, called Ri Chosen : 

" invented a cannon called Shin-ten-rai, or " heaven-shaking 
thunder," which by his art he secretly brought to the foot of the 
castle. It was put in operation and shot into the castle, where it fell 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 165 

into the courtyard. The Japanese troops were ignorant of its 
construction, and rushed forward to see what curious missile had 
been shot at them by the enemy, when all of a sudden the gun- 
powder poison burst forth, with a noise which made heaven and 
earth to tremble, and it broke up into splinters of iron, which caused 
instant death to any one whom they struck. More than thirty men 
were killed in this way, and even those who were not killed were 
flung to the ground." 

It will be seen that, according to the Japanese 
account of it, the whole so-called cannon with its 
contents was shot into the castle. The cannon 
according to Korean record, as quoted by Mr. 
Hulbert, was made of bell metal, about eight feet in 
length, with a bore of twelve or fourteen inches, 
and the Korean records agree with those of Japan 
in stating that this machine could project itself bodily 
through the air for a distance of forty paces. Mr. 
Hulbert suggests, that the dimensions and name apply 
to the gun, and that it was a kind of mortar from 
which an explosive missile was discharged. It is 
not impossible, however, that the Koreans had cata- 
pults capable of hurling a large iron projectile for 
a distance of forty yards, even one eight feet long, 
and it would be more in consonance with both the 
Korean and Japanese accounts to assume that the 
invention was limited to the explosive missile and 
did not include the machine by which it was dis- 
charged. Whatever be the correct explanation as 
to the means by which it was discharged, its success 
was complete. It so filled the Japanese garrison with 
terror that they hastily evacuated the city and left 
it to the Koreans. 

All these circumstances tended to raise the droop- 
ing spirits of the Koreans ; and they had also further 
subjects of congratulation, enough to make them 
think that the darkest hours of the national humilia- 
tion had passed and that they could hope to free 



166 THE STORY OF KOREA 

themselves from their ruthless invaders. China at 
last awakened to her responsibilities, to the duty 
which she owed to Korea and to Hideyoshi's schemes 
against herself, and was now coming to the help 
of her sorely tried vassal, the vassal whose misfor- 
tunes were mainly due to unswerving loyalty to the 
suzerain, and Korea gained command of the sea. 



CHAPTER IX 

HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION ; THE SECOND STAGE 

We have before stated that the Koreans were better 
sailors than the Japanese and possessed larger ships. 
They had, however, made no preparations for the 
war and had not ventured to face the great fleet 
with which Hideyoshi's transports were convoyed, 
either while it was on the high seas or during the 
early stages of the war when it lay at anchor in 
Korean harbours. However much Korea had to 
bewail the incapacity of her generals, their rashness 
or only too often their cowardice, she was fortunate 
enough to have in command of her fleet one whose 
name deserves enrolment among the greatest naval 
heroes of the world, who to the most undaunted 
courage, to the personal magnetism which made him 
a leader of men, to fortitude in adversity, and to a 
noble generosity which enabled him to sink the sensi- 
bility of injustice and unrequited merit in devoted 
patriotism, added tactical and inventive genius of 
a high order ; who combined, it may be said without 
very great exaggeration, the military seamanship of 
Nelson with the constructive skill, as far as it could 
be displayed in those days of engineering primitive- 
ness, of the most scientific shipbuilders. 

While Japan's armies were triumphantly over- 
running the whole peninsula, her fighting fleet lay 
idly in the shelter of the island of Konchi, a 
little to the west of Fusan. The communications 

167 



168 THE STORY OF KOREA 

with 'Kiusiu were uninterrupted, and when all was 
well with the Army there seemed to be no scope 
for the Navy. At last when Konishi was safely 
established in Phyong An, and was awaiting the 
arrival of the strong reinforcements which Hideyoshi 
had promised from his reserves at Nagoya, to 
continue his advance towards the frontier of China, 
he summoned the fleet to the estuary of the River 
Tatong to clear the west coast for the reinforce- 
ments which were to be sent by sea and so saved from 
the long overland march from Fusan, to protect their 
landing and to guard the river so that all the land 
forces might be free for the advance, for which 
every available man would be required. The Korean 
Admiral, Yi Sun, had not been idle. He had com- 
pletely reconstructed his whole fleet. He had all his 
ships double decked, their bulwarks strengthened, 
both on the lower and upper decks, so as to afford 
effective shelter for his archers, and studded on tteir 
outward sides with iron spikes as a protection against 
boarders. But his constructive skill went much 
farther, and for its result we cannot do better than 
quote in full Mr. Hulbert's description of what he 
very justly claims, assuming the description to be 
correct, to have been the first ironclad in history : 

" The main reason for his unparalleled successes was the posses- 
sion of a peculiar war-vessel of his own invention and construction. 
It was called the Kwi-sun, or ' tortoise-boat/ from its resemblance 
to that animal. There is no doubt that the tortoise furnished the 
model for the boat. Its greatest peculiarity was a curved deck of 
iron plates, like the back of a tortoise, which completely sheltered 
the fighters and rowers beneath. In front was a hideous crested 
head erect, with a wide-open mouth, through which arrows and 
other missiles could be discharged. There was another opening in 
the rear, and six on either side for the same purpose. On the top 
of the curved deck there was a narrow walk from stem to stern, 
and another across the middle from side to side ; but every other 
part of the back bristled with iron spikes, so that an enemy who 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 169 

should endeavour to board her would find himself immediately 
impaled upon a score of spear-heads. This deck, being of iron, 
rendered the ship impervious to fire-arrows, and so the occupants 
could go into action with as much security as one of our modern 
battle-ships could go into engagements with the wooden war-vessels 
of a century ago. In addition to this, she was built for speed, and 
could easily overtake anything afloat. This made her doubly 
formidable, for even flight could not avail the enemy. She usually 
did more execution after the flight commenced than before, for she 
could overtake and ram them one by one probably better than she 
could handle them when drawn up in line of battle." ■ 

No mention is made by Japanese historians pf 
the iron deck or sheathing although they describe 
the iron -spiked roofs. But even though Yi Sun may 
not claim to have been the inventor and builder of 
the first ironclad, he undoubtedly made his ships by 
far more powerful instruments of marine warfare 
than any that the Japanese could bring against them, 
and in one other respect he anticipated naval archi- 
tects of the nineteenth century. 

British residents at Chinese and Japanese ports 
in the sixties and seventies of the last century were 
familiar with the corvettes under the United States 
flag that were popularly known as " double-enders." 
They were paddle-wheel steamers, with stem and 
stern precisely similar, so that they would advance 
or retreat without turning, and were originally 
designed and built for service on the Mississippi 
in the Secessionist War. When the war was over, 
they were sent to patrol the Chinese rivers, a service 
for which they were admirably adapted, and all their 
last years were passed in Eastern waters. Yi Sun 
made his most powerful galleys double -enders, with 
what result we shall soon see. 

The Japanese were busy at their anchorage pre- 
paring for their voyage to the north, when the Korean 

1 Hulbert, u History of Korea," vol. i. p. 376. 



170 THE STORY OF KOREA 

fleet appeared off the entrance of the inlet. They 
were no sooner seen by the Japanese than it became 
evident Korean sailors were as ready to fly as Korean 
soldiers, for the whole fleet turned at once and put 
out to sea. The Japanese sailors, burning to emulate 
the deeds of the soldiers, at once slipped their cables 
and started in hot pursuit. The Koreans had come 
with a favouring wind, so their oarsmen were fresh 
and the chase might have been a long one. Suddenly 
a signal was given ; there was no going-about pf 
the Korean fleet : the oarsmen simply reversed their 
oars, and down on the pursuing Japanese caime the 
Koreans with all the speed that a strong wind at their 
backs and untired oarsmen could give them. The 
astounded Japanese found themselves trapped ; their 
ships, as they struggled against the head sea or 
endeavoured to wear, were rammed and sunk or set 
on fire by fire-arrows, and they were helpless in 
return. They could not board their enemy on account 
of the spikes ; their arrows and bullets were as 
impotent against the strong bulwarks and roofed 
decks of the Koreans as the fire of the Federal 
wooden liners was against the protected Merrimac^ 
and neither side had cannon. The contest was a 
hopeless one. Soon the survivors were in full flight, 
the Koreans pursuing and sinking throughout, and it 
was a very small remnant of the fleet that at last 
found safety, not in its former anchorage but in the 
shelter of the River Naktong, almost under the very 
walls of Fusan. 

This great victory was followed by others. The 
coast was patrolled by swift Korean galleys, and no 
Japanese ship could approach it undetected ; so that 
all supplies and reinforcements from Japan were cut 
off, and the army of more than two hundred thousand 
men that was scattered throughout Korea, from the 
extreme frontier on the north-east to which Kato had 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 171 

extended his march, and Phyong An in the north- 
west, where Konishi was eagerly awaiting the supplies 
and reinforcements that were never to come, down 
to the southern provinces of Cholla and Kyong Syang, 
had now to depend entirely on itself. a . 

History does not afford any more striking instance / I 
of the influence of sea power, of the salvation which j 
it affords to a maritime nation, threatened or suffering 
from an over-seas invasion, and it is a pity that 
it was not known to Mahan, so that he might have 
used it in confirmation of the theories that are 
advocated in his great work. It at once changed 
the whole aspect of the war. It placed the invaders 
entirely on the defensive, forced them to convert 
their triumphant advance into a perilous retreat, and 
infused new hope and courage into the Koreans, so 
that they prosecuted their guerilla warfare with re- 
doubled energy and with a success that was as well- 
nigh unbroken as had been their defeats previously 
in pitched battles. The Japanese could not exist 
without foraging. Everywhere their foraging parties 
were ambushed and cut off and the camps were 
kept in a perpetual tension. The guerillas rendej^ed 
a no less important service in detecting a number 
of their own countrymen who were paid spies in the 
service of the Japanese. Their punishment of the 
spies was drastic enough to deter very effectually 
other Koreans from playing the traitor, so that the 
Japanese had to rely on their own scouts for infor 
mation and very often the scouting party never 
returned. The time was also at hand at which the 
Koreans were no longer to have to rely on their own ' 
unaided strength and resources. 

At the beginning of the war the Qhinese were 
strongly suspicious of the good faith of < the Koreans, 
and notwithstanding successive appeals for help 
that were made to them by the fugitive King, his 




172 THE STORY OF KOREA 

defeats and the rapid advance of the Japaiibse at 
first seemed only to confirm their suspicions, ^hey 
thought that such rapidity could only have B^en 
attained with Korean connivance. The fall, \of 
Phyong An and the continued flight of the King ^a,t 
last showed them that their suspicion^ were ill- 
founded ; then tardily awaking to their duty, iipy, 
sent a force of five thousand men from Li4p l^ing 
to recapture Phyong! An, which it jis to be remembered 
was held by Konishi with thirty thousand veterans. 
The fatuousness of the Chinese commander equalled 
the very worst displays of the Koreans at the Injin 
and Tatong Rivers. Arrived opposite the town, he 
found the gates wide open and no sign of resistance. 
So with his men he marched straight in, only to 
find himself attacked from both sides of all the 
narrow streets and lanes by Japanese archers and 
musketeers safely hidden in the houses. He and 
the majority of his men were shot down, and such 
panic seized the survivors that they did not draw 
bridle again till they were safely over their own 
frontier. This happened on October 3, 1592. It 
showed China the seriousness of the task which she 
had undertaken, and she now set herself in earnest to 
organise an army sufficient for it. While engaged 
in her preparations some illusory negotiations for 
peace were entered into between Konishi and a 
Chinese envoy named Chin Ikei, and an armistice 
was agreed on for fifty days. Its whole object was, 
however, only to give time to the Chinese, and before 
it was over a well-equipped and disciplined army 
which the Japanese historians alleged to have 
numbered two hundred thousand men, but which, 
according to the more reliable Koreans, did not 
exceed forty thousand men, was on its way to Korea, 
and when there it was joined by large numbers of 
Koreans. The Japanese number probably applied 



HIDEYOSHIS INVASION 173 

to the united Korean and Chinese armies, though 
even then it was largely exaggerated. 

The difficulties of the Japanese scouts when they 
had lost the services of Korean spys have been 
already mentioned. The Chinese, crossing the Yalu 
on the ice and marching with ease and rapidity over 
the frozen roads to which they were well accustomed, 
were before Phyong An early in February, 1593, and 
the first intimation Konishi had of their approach was 
afforded by their appearance. He made such hasty 
preparations as he could for defence, but was driven 
into the citadel with heavy loss. Adopting tactics 
which the Japanese themselves followed, both at 
Phyong An and Port Arthur, in their war with China 
in our own day, the Chinese commander did not 
completely invest the citadel, and purposely left the 
southern gate unguarded. Through it the Japanese 
retreated at night, and crossing the River Tatong on 
the ice, started on their retreat to Seoul under con- 
ditions no less severe than those which accompanied 
Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow. Konishi's 
troops were nearly all from Kiusiu, and, unlike their 
Chinese foes, were totally unaccustomed to the arctic 
severity of the winter in Northern Korea. The 
country all round had been made a waste by them- 
selves. Konishi had established a line of bases at 
intervals along the road from Seoul to Phyong An, 
in each of which he expected to find provisions ; but 
their commander, Otomo, Prince of Bungo, also a 
Christian, had deserted them when he heard of the 
fall of Phyong An, and without awaiting his chief 
or his army, had himself hurriedly retreated to the 
safety of Seoul. Hungry, benumbed with cold, foot- 
sore, and dispirited, the Japanese continued their 
retreat till they reached Seoul. 

On their way they were joined when near the 
capital by Kato, whom the fall of Phyong An had 



174 THE STORY OF KOREA 

compelled to evacuate the province of Ham Gyong 
with no less precipitousness than Konishi had with- 
drawn from Phyong An. But while neither Chinese 
nor Koreans had ventured to molest the latter on his 
retreat, Kato had to fight his way through hordes 
of guerillas who were swarming all round him and 
to whom the new successes, both in the north and 
south, both on land and sea, had given new enter- 
prise and courage. His principal achievements, apart 
from the desolation he spread all round, was the 
capture as prisoners of war of two Korean princes, 
who were sent to organise the defences of the north- 
eastern province when the King fled from Seoul. 

The rival Japanese generals had parted when the 
arms of both were triumphant, and it seemed certain 
that they would be carried in further triumph into 
China. They met again, when it seemed more certain 
that they would have to fight for their very lives, 
and both commanded beaten and hunted armies. It 
was proposed that the retreat should be at once 
continued to Fusan, but bolder counsels prevailed, 
and it was determined to try the fortunes of war 1 
once more before Seoul was abandoned. The Chinese, 
who had slowly followed the retreating armies from 
Phyong An, arrived at Pachiung, a day's march from 
the capital. A sharp skirmish took place in which 
they had the advantage, and, emboldened by this 
success, they advanced against the capital, outside 
of which they were met by the desperate Japanese. 
The battle was bitterly fought, but the short swords 
of the Chinese were no match for the long swords 
and muskets of the Japanese, and the victory was 
pn the side of the Japanese. The Chinese were 
driven from the field with terrible loss, and the 
Japanese were able to remain with security in Seoul. 

Their plight was desperate all the same. It has 
been told before that when they first entered Seoul 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 175 

on their northern advance, the inhabitants suffered 
no more than they would have done from an army 
of their own countrymen. Whether it was that 
Christians were no longer predominant among the 
Japanese or a Christian general at their head in un- 
disputed command, or whether it was that the spirit 
of the army advancing, in triumph was changed into 
remorseless cruelty when the same army was forced 
to fight in desperation for its very existence, need 
not be argued, but the fact remains that before the 
battle the Japanese slaughtered the inhabitants of 
the city wholesale, sparing only a number whom 
they forced to act as baggage coolies, and burnt 
the greater portion of the city. Their excuse foir 
this savage act was that they feared a demonstra- 
tion from the townspeople in their rear while they 
were engaged with the Chinese soldiers in their front. 
Its consequences reverted on themselves. They were 
houseless and foodless in a city that lay in the midst 
of a wasted country. Famine was all around them, 
and disease followed it, and they suffered not so 
much as but along with the wretched inhabitants. 
Soon their position was so desperate that they made 
overtures for peace — overtures that were willingly re- 
ceived by the Chinese general, who was not eager 
after his last experience to try again the ordeal of 
battle. An armistice was finally made, the principal 
terms of which were that the Japanese should evacu- 
ate the capital and withdraw to Fusan, and that an 
embassy should be sent by China to Hideyoshi to 
conclude a lasting peace. The evacuation was carried 
out on May 9, 1583, and the Chinese entered the city 
on the following day. 

The Japanese were permitted to continue their 
march to Fusan without molestation, and on arrival 
there to entrench themselves in fortified camps. Here, 
in a milder climate by the sea, with sufficient supplies, 



176 THE STORY OF KOREA 

they could await with some patience the result of the 
embassy's mission to Hideyoshi. The negotiations 
were throughout exclusively between the Chinese and 
Japanese, neither of whom seem to have considered 
it incumbent on them to consult the Koreans. They, 
on their part, were fiercely indignant when the wanton 
invaders from whom they had suffered so terribly 
were allowed to retreat unmolested, and notwith- 
standing all their losses they still spurned every 
thought of peace so long as a single one of their 
enemies remained on Korean soil. 

The embassy, headed by the same Chin Ikei, who 
has been already mentioned, was soon on its way to 
Nagoya. On its arrival it was received by Hide- 
yoshi in the most friendly manner, and during its 
stay (which exceeded a month) was entertained with 
the ostentatious splendour that was on all occasions 
so dear to the heart of the great parvenu. But 
while the embassy was still at Nagoya, while Hide- 
yoshi was overwhelming the Chinese ambassador with 
compliments and hospitality, he showed that however 
much he may have abandoned his hope of conquer- 
ing China, he had lost nothing of his vindictiveness 
towards Korea, on which he laid all the blame of 
the miscarriage of his great plans. It is true that 
he gave orders for the release of the two Korean 
princes who had been made prisoners by Kato, but 
this was done, not as a compliment to Korea, but 
as a concession to China of a point on which great 
stress had been laid throughout all the negotiations 
that had taken place from Seoul onwards. To Korea 
he forgave nothing. 

The unsuccessful assault by the Japanese on the 
town of Chinju has been previously mentioned. It 
was one of the strongest towns in Southern Korea, 
and such was the King's confidence in its impregna- 
bility that the royal treasures were sent there for 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 177 

safety when the flight took place from Seoul. Hide- 
yoshi was deeply mortified by the failure to take it, 
and his anger was not mollified by the fact that, after 
the repulse, the castle was the base of many guerilla 
attacks on the Japanese forces in the south, in which 
they suffered heavily. He did not forget it, and was 
determined to avenge his defeat before any peace 
was made. While the negotiations were in actual 
progress at Nagoya, while protestations of sincere 
friendship were being interchanged with the Chinese 
Ambassador, orders that Chinju must be taken were 
sent to the generals encamped at Fusan, in the neigh- 
bourhood of which place the whole strength of the 
Japanese in Korea, recently reinforced by fifty 
thousand fresh soldiers, was now concentrated. The 
Koreans, in their turn, had assembled the largest 
force which had throughout the war been united 
into one army, and they were sufficiently confident 
in themselves to meet the Japanese in the open a 
little to the east of the town. But neither now nor at 
any time were they, no matter how bravely they 
fought, a match for the Japanese when in line of 
battle in the open field. On this occasion they were 
mowed down in thousands by the Japanese swords- 
men and driven back into the castle, which was im- 
mediately invested. Then the Japanese had a harder 
task. The storming parties were repeatedly driven 
back with heavy loss from the castle wall, until Kato 
devised " a testudo of ox -hides, stretched on a frame- 
work, which was pushed forward on wheels to the 
base of the castle walls. Under its protection the 
corner-stones were removed by crowbars and the 
wall fell, leaving a breach by which the Japanese 
effected an entrance." Then all was soon over. The 
massacre of the open field was repeated, and when 
that was over the old castle was levelled to the 
ground. Hideyoshi's vanity was appeased, the only 

12 



178 THE STORY OF KOREA 

object in this expedition, which in its utter wanton- 
ness rivalled the whole war, but at the cost of sixty 
thousand Korean lives and of a heavy loss among his 
own troops. 

This was the last military operation of what is 
called " the first invasion.' ' Thenceforward the much 
harried country enjoyed a respite of peace for three 
years, while its fate was being discussed by the 
Chinese and Japanese authorities, with as little regard 
to its own wishes as reference to its opinions. Any- 
thing more deplorable than the condition of the 
country at this period it would be difficult to imagine. 
Even the worst records of Japan's own miseries 
throughout her civil wars or those of Germany during 
the Thirty Years War pale before the authentic 
historic descriptions of what the Koreans suffered, 
the details of which would be almost offensive to tell 
in this place. Their Chinese allies had been scarcely 
less a burthen to them than their Japanese enemies. 
Both had eaten everything available, and between the 
two there was nothing left for the wretched natives, 
who starved. So great was the famine that spread 
throughout the whole land in 1594, in consequence 
of the impossibility of sowing or harvesting in the 
previous years, and of the consumption of the contents 
of all the granaries, that not even the Chinese or 
Japanese soldiers could find enough to eat, a 
fact which accelerated the ultimate withdrawal of 
both. Notwithstanding all they had suffered, the 
Korean spirit was still unbroken. They burned for 
revenge on their enemies, and they still scorned the 
proposal of peace until the last Japanese soldier had 
left their shores. 

The whole story of the negotiations is a very 
curious illustration of the methods of Eastern diplo- 
matists and of the difficulties which they experienced 
with their own authorities. Hideyoshi had to be 



HIDEYOSHIS INVASION 179 

convinced that he was being dealt with on equal 
terms with the Emperor of China. The latter, on 
the other hand, believed that Hideyoshi was a 
suppliant begging forgiveness for his misdeeds, and 
humbly praying for the honour of being permitted to 
offer tribute as a vassal to the Son of Heaven. It 
says well for the astuteness of the diplomatists, if 
not for their honesty and truth, that both the Emperor 
and Hideyoshi were ultimately satisfied. The 
Koreans were warned that, if they obstinately re- 
fused to make peace, they could expect no further 
help from China, and a treaty was finally concluded 
at Peking, the main terms of which were : 

i. That the Chinese Emperor should grant royal 
investiture to Hideyoshi. 

2. That the Japanese should leave Korea. 

3. That the Japanese should never again invade 
Korea. 

In concluding this treaty the Japanese envoy £t 
Peking showed himself no less astute or unscrupulous 
than had been the Chinese at Nagoya in glossing the 
truth so as to make his representations palatable 
to the Chinese Court. He went so far as to say that 
the sacred Emperor of Japan, the direct descendant 
of the gods, the lineal representative of a dynasty 
which had reigned for more than two thousand years, 
and the regent Hideyoshi, a lowly-born peasant 
who only held his office while his right arm was 
strong enough to defend it, were one and the same 
person. 

The Chinese carried out their obligations under 
the treaty. Their troops were now entirely withdrawn 
from Korea, and an embassy was sent overland from 
Peking to Seoul on its way to Japan to carry out 
the ceremonial of Hideyoshi's investiture. The 
Japanese, on the other hand, notwithstanding their 
promises, continued to hold Fusan and a few other 



180 THE STORY OF KOREA 

garrisons in its vicinity. New complications accord- 
ingly arose when this was discovered by the Chinese 
ambassadors, of whom there were two, and they 
declined to continue their journey beyond Seoul until 
the Japanese fulfilled their obligations under the 
treaty. More Oriental duplicity followed. The 
Japanese evacuated all the garrisons except Fusan, 
and they only held this, they said, until the Chinese 
ambassadors gave evidence of their good faith by 
coming into the camp at that place. Then, when the 
ambassadors had given this proof, the Japanese said 
they must await further instructions from Hideyoshi, 
and while they were waiting the two ambassadors 
were virtual prisoners in the camp. The senior of 
the two lost both his trust in Japanese honesty and 
his own courage, and absconded, leaving even his 
seals of office behind him, and, alone and unattended, 
secretly made his way by mountain paths back to 
Seoul, suffering much privation on the road. Further 
communication with Peking was rendered necessary 
by this contretemps, and what with the delay caused 
by it and by awaiting Hideyoshi's instructions, nearly 
a full year passed between the first arrival of the 
ambassadors at Fusan and their landing at Sakai, 
the port of Osaka where Hideyoshi was to receive 
them. They had made urgent endeavours to induce 
the Koreans to associate a Korean ambassador with 
them, but all they had succeeded in obtaining was 
the attachment of two subordinate officials to their 
own retinue. The Japanese, notwithstanding the 
treaty and all their subsequent assurances, still con- 
tinued to garrison Fusan. 

The mainspring of all the delay was the same as 
that which caused the war and the massacre of 
Chinju — Hideyoshi's personal vanity. He wished to 
display his own magnificence to the utmost, and the 
ambassadors were purposely delayed by his instruc- 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 181 

tions in Fusan while he made the necessary prepara- 
tions to that end. What these preparations were is 
fully described by the Jesuits : 

" He built a great hall for audience so very spacious and large, 
that one might conveniently spread in it upward of a thousand 
Tatames. These Tatames are a fine and spacious sort of mats, full 
yard and a half long, and half yard broad, edged with gold and silk 
fringe, and embellished with rich and noble squares ; the hall itself 
was built of precious materials. All within was covered with gold. 
On the other side of the ditch that environed the palace, he raised 
a theatre of some sixty foot long, and two and twenty broad, 
supported by a number of pillars, partly plain, partly fluted, and 
partly twisted, but all of them curiously varnished, and distinguished 
with variety of figures, wrought in pure gold. Moreover by way of 
passage from the hall to this theatre, for all these curiosities were 
exposed, he laid a bridge over the ditch of some sixty foot long 
which cost, for workmanship only, near fifteen thousand crowns. 
It was covered at the top with gilt slaits, and the supports as well 
as the rails and greatest part of the pavement were all covered with 
plates of gold." ■ 

All his preparations were nullified and his vast 
expenditure wasted. On the night of August 30, 
1596, one of the most terrible of the many terrible 
earthquakes that have visited Japan spread death 
and destruction throughout Osaka, and it was followed 
within a few days by a second no less violent. " It 
was so frightful and terrible as if all the devils in 
Hell had broke loose." x All Hideyoshi's great build- 
ings, including the Hall of the Thousand Mats, were 
levelled to the ground. His palace at Fushimi, which 
far exceeded the rest both in beauty, riches, and 
magnificence of structure, shared the same fate ; his 
concubines (of whom there were several hundreds) 
were crushed in its ruins, and he himself barely 
escaped, carrying his infant son in his arms, to take 
refuge in a peasant's hut in the mountains, where 

1 Crasset, " History of the Church in Japan," vol. ii. 



182 THE STORY OF KOREA 

he remained so terrified that none durst speak to 
him. More time was lost while the traces of the 
ruin were being effaced, and it was not till October 
that Hideyoshi was in a position to receive the 
embassy. The reception was shorn of much of its 
intended grandeur ; but it was still very impressive, 
and Hideyoshi, recovered from his fright and in high 
good-humour, was solemnly invested, in the presence 
of all his Court, with the insignia of royal rank 
that had been sent by the Emperor of China, and 
at the banquet which followed the investiture " all 
went merry as a marriage bell." 

The merriment was of short duration. The patent 
of investiture which accompanied the insignia was, as 
usual, written in the most classic Chinese, a language 
which, in its written form, is as intelligible to any 
educated Japanese gentleman as is a document in 
French to a European diplomatist. But Hideyoshi 
was not educated, and was therefore totally unable 
to read the patent himself. After the banquet was 
over he accordingly directed two priests to perform 
this service for him, and they, though they were 
earnestly begged by Konishi to modify its language, 
faithfully performed their functions of interpreters 
and read both the patent and the letter in which it 
was enclosed verbatim. Its text was as follows : 

" The influence of the holy and divine one [Confucius] is wide- 
spread ; he is honoured and loved wherever the heavens overhang 
and the earth upbears. The Imperial; command is universal ; even 
as far as the bounds of the ocean where the sun rises, there are none 
who do not obey it. 

" In ancient times our Imperial ancestors bestowed their favours 
on many lands : the Tortoise knots and the Dragon writing were 
sent to the limits of far Fusang [Japan], the pure alabaster and the 
great seal character were granted to the mountains of the sub- 
missive country. Thereafter came billowy times when communica- 
tion was interrupted, but an auspicious opportunity has now arrived 
when it has pleased us again to address you. 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 183 

"You, Toyotomi Taira Hideyoshi, having established an Island 
Kingdom, and knowing the reverence due to the Central Land, sent 
to the west an envoy, and with gladness and affection offered your 
allegiance. On the north you knocked at the barrier of ten thousand 
li, and earnestly requested to be admitted within our dominions. 
Your mind is already confirmed in reverent submissiveness. How 
can we grudge our favour to so great meekness ? 

" We do therefore specially invest you with the dignity of King of 
Japan, and to that intent issue this our commission. Treasure it up 
carefully. Over the sea we send you a crown and robe, so that you 
may follow our ancient custom as respects dress. Faithfully defend 
the Frontier of the Empire ; let it be your study to act worthily of 
your position as our Minister ; practise moderation and self-restraint ; 
cherish gratitude for the Imperial favour so bountifully bestowed 
upon you ; change not your fidelity ; be humbly guided by our 
admonitions ; continue always to follow our instructions. 

"Respect this!" 

The tone of the letter was similar to that of the 
patent. It gave detailed instructions to Hideyoshi 
as to the administration of his own Government ; 
and he was told to " respectfully follow the commands 
given to him and to let there be no deviation from 
them, for severe is the glance of Heaven and 
resplendently bright are the Imperial precepts." 

Hideyoshi's indignation at both documents was 
as might have been expected. Instead of being 
acclaimed as the royal equal of the Emperor of 
China, he found himself treated as a vassal who 
had erred from the path of duty to his suzerain and 
was now humbly suing for pardon. He tore off 
the crown and robes that had been sent to him 
and flung the patent beneath his feet. He ordered 
the ambassadors to quit Japan without delay, without 
showing them the most ordinary courtesies of inter- 
national usage, and they embarked in such haste that 
they were obliged to take their passages in vessels 
with no proper accommodation for them or their 
suites. When the first burst of passion was over 



184 THE STORY OF KOREA 

and time came for reflection, Hideyoshi recognised 
the folly of again embroiling himself with China 
and, tyrant as he was, directed his wrath against 
the innocent, suffering, and exhausted Korea. 

Two subordinate Korean officials accompanied the 
Chinese embassy. Hideyoshi from the first, even 
when he was most lavish in his complimencs to the 
ambassadors, refused to receive them, alleging that 
the Korean princes who had been prisoners of war 
should either have come in person or sent an 
embassy of high officials to express their thanks for 
their release. This grievance was now disinterred 
and even more vigorous life given to it than it had 
originally. The Koreans were also charged with 
having concealed from Hideyoshi the true condition 
of China and with having thrown obstacles in the 
way of peace between China and Japan. These were 
quite sufficient grounds for a renewal of the war 
and for another invasion. Once more Japan was 
astir with military preparations ; and by March, 1897, 
such strong reinforcements had been poured into 
Korea that a Japanese army of one hundred and 
thirty thousand men was encamped around Fusan, 
the principal commands being once more divided 
between Konishi and Kato. 

The question naturally arises, What had become of 
Korea's navy, and where was her distinguished 
admiral, that this great force, of the coming of which 
there was full warning, was permitted to land with no 
more opposition than that which was encountered by 
the first expedition? The answer is a sad illustration 
of the canker of the Court intrigue and corruption [that 
turned Korea's military administration into rottenness 
and made her generals each anxious only for his 
own interests and as eager to thwart his rivals as he 
was to inflict damage on his enemies. The brave 
and able admiral had fallen a victim to the intrigues 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 185 

of the miserable Court and to the slanders of political 
rivals, and, as has been told in a preceding chapter, 
the reward which he received for his great and 
glorious services was that, not only of deprivation of 
his command but of reduction to the ranks. He was 
now serving as a common sailor, while the fleet was 
commanded by one who owed his post entirely to 
Court influence, who united in himself the qualifica- 
tions of incompetence and drunkenness, and who was 
equally hated and despised by his men. Under such 
a commander the fleet had fallen into utter disor- 
ganisation and was useless as a defensive factor. The 
Japanese, on the other hand, taught by their previous 
bitter experience, had given special care to their 
naval affairs, and had now at their disposal a well 
manned and well found fleet. It is anticipating some- 
what the course of events, but for convenience sake 
the story may now be told of the naval operations 
of the second war. 

Won Kiun, the new admiral, lay idly in the shelter 
of one of the islands off the south-west coast till the 
landing of the Japanese forces had been completed. 
The Japanese fleet after the landing of the troops re- 
mained in the harbour of Fusan, and Won Kiun at 
last very reluctantly obeyed the orders he had 
received to attack it. All the circumstances of the 
attack were the exact antithesis of those that attended 
Yi Sun's great victory. Yi Sun led a well found fleet, 
manned by officers and crews full of confidence in the 
skill and bravery of their admiral. He chose a day 
on which he had the advantage of a fair wind, so 
that his crews arrived on the scene of battle with 
all their physical strength in reserve. Won Kiun, on 
the other hand, commanded a fleet, large in numbers 
and tonnage, but ill found in every respect, not even 
properly provided with the most necessary provisions, 
even with water, whose officers and crews despised 



186 THE STORY OF KOREA 

and hated their admiral, and in advancing to the 
attack, on the day chosen by their admiral, all 
had to face a strong head wind. The conse- 
quence was that, when they arrived on the scene, 
late in the day, all the energy of the crews 
had been expended at their oars and they 
were, in addition, exhausted with hunger and thirst. 
The attack, feeble as it was, was easily beaten off, and 
the surviving Korean ships fled to a neighbouring 
island, where the crews, tnad with thirst, rushed ashore 
for water. There they were again attacked by the 
victorious Japanese, and the survivors once more had 
to seek safety in an ignominious flight, this time to 
their original anchorage ; there they were safe for the 
time being. The admiral was not shot, as was a later 
English admiral, but, as an incentive to better conduct 
for the future, flogged. The punishment failed in 
its intention. He endeavoured to drown his humilia- 
tion in drink, and the result was that, soon after, 
both he and the remnant of his fleet were easily 
taken by the confident Japanese. Here we may 
leave the unfortunate Won Kiun, who appears no 
more in our story. We shall again have to mention 
his gallant rival, Yi Sun. 

The fruits of these naval successes on the part of 
the Japanese were as striking as had been those of 
the Korean naval victory five years before. The 
Japanese had complete command of the sea, and 
their armies were at liberty to open the land cam- 
paign in full confidence that they would be supported 
by all the supplies and reinforcements they might 
require from Japan. Before endeavouring to describe 
the campaign we must revert to the Chinese. 

.When the humiliated ambassadors returned to 
Peking after their insulting dismissal by Hideyoshi, 
they at first endeavoured to 'conceal what had joccurred 
and actually produced spurious presesnts which they 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 187 

alleged had been sent by Hideyoshi in gratitude for 
the honour that had been shown to him by the 
Emperor. They had, however, no letter in reply 
to that of the Emperor, the presents were seen not 
to be Japanese productions, and a strict investigation 
that followed disclosed all the circumstances of the 
failure of their mission. The ambassadors were both 
disgraced — one of them subsequently became a 
fugitive to Japan, where he was imprisoned and 
beheaded — and it was determined to wipe out the 
affront that had been offered to the Emperor 
and once more espouse the cause of the threatened 
tributary. A beginning was made by sending a force 
of three thousand men, which was soon largely rein- 
forced. The whole of the south-western province 
of Cholla was occupied and the fortresses of Nam- 
won and Chinju strengthened and garrisoned. 

It was one of the principles of Hideyoshi's strategy 
that an invading army should support itself at the 
expense of the occupied country, and in fulfilment of 
this principle the Japanese, who, all told, numbered 
one hundred and thirty thousand men, remained in 
their camps near Fusan till the Korean harvest was 
ready for reaping. This was not until the month of 
October. A general advance was then made, the first 
object being the fortress of Namwon, which was 
taken by assault. The whole garrison was put to 
the sword, and over three thousand heads of the 
slain were pickled and forwarded to Hideyoshi as 
evidence of the victory. The provinces of Cholla 
and Chhung Chyong were then overrun, and Seoul 
was once more threatened, so much so that the 
advisability was discussed of the King once more 
leaving his capital. Only the ladies of the Court, 
however, were sent away, and the capital was saved 
by a fiercely contested battle at Chik-san, a town 
in the extreme north of Chhung Chyong, about eighty 



188 THE STORY OF KOREA 

miles from the capital and not far from Asan, where 
nearly three hundred years later the Japanese and 
Chinese were destined to again try the fortune of 
arms. The issue of the battle was undecided, but 
the Japanese loss was heavy : their prospect of being 
able to winter in the capital was gone ; large Chinese 
reinforcements, under the Commander-in-Chief, were, 
it was known, on their way to Seoul ; supplies were 
difficult to obtain ; and it was decided to retreat once 
more and winter in their old camps in the south. The 
retreat was accomplished without pursuit or attack 
on the way, but on the part of the Japanese it was 
a continuous progress of destruction. Each town 
that they passed on their march was ruthlessly 
plundered ; and the culmination of their vandalism 
was reached at Kyunju, the historic capital of the 
ancient kingdom of Silla, rich in noble memorials of 
the past and in the best artistic products of medieval 
Korean art. It was one of the birthplaces of the 
Japanese civilisation and contained much that should 
have appealed to their national sentiment, but the 
soul of a retreating army, whose foes are not far 
off, is dead to sentiment. The town was sacked and 
as the Japanese marched out of it they set it o!n 
fire in many places, and left behind them only 
blackened walls and empty spaces to represent what 
had been a great and flourishing city. They were 
not allowed much time for repose when they reached 
their camps in the south. They were speedily 
followed by both Chinese and Korean forces ; and 
Yolsan, a strongly fortified town on the coast, with 
communication therefore by sea as well as by land 
with the headquarters at Fusan, the most northern 
of the Japanese positions, held by Kato with a 
large garrison, was soon invested by the allied 
armies . 

The Japanese were driven from the outer entrench- 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 189 

ments into the citadel, but they successfully repelled 
several vigorous efforts that were made to take the 
citadel by storm. Then the siege was converted into 
a blockade, which the Japanese were ill prepared to 
endure. Their land communications had all been 
cut off. The sea was open, but Yi Sun had been 
restored to his rank and command and he was once 
more afloat and his flag flying. Supplies could not 
be relied on from Fusan, when the vigorous and 
enterprising Korean admiral might swoop down on 
transports at any moment and the garrison of Yol- 
san was reduced to the utmost straits. 

" Their supplies of rice were soon exhausted, the cattle and horses 
followed next, and officers and men alike were in a short time 
reduced to the utmost extremities. They chewed earth and paper 
and, stealing out by night, thought themselves fortunate if they 
could find among the corpses lying outside the walls some dead 
Chinaman whose haversack was not entirely empty." 

Their only fuel was furnished by the arrows that 
were shot into the citadel by their foes. The New 
Year's festal season — the greatest social festival of 
the year with Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans alike — 
was passed within the fortress walls in gloom and 
want, while in the camps of the besiegers outside 
there were merriment and abundance. Surrender 
could have brought to the besieged nothing but the 
fate to which they had consigned the garrisons of 
Namwon, Chinju, and many others. They had never 
shown mercy to a fallen foe and could expect none 
themselves. But they were not destined to fall. The 
New Year (1598) had not long run its course when 
a strong relieving army came to their assistance from 
Fusan. The besiegers, simultaneously attacked on the 
rear by fresh and vigorous soldiers and in their 
front by the emaciated garrison, whom their weak- 
ness did not prevent sallying forth to the assistance of 



190 THE STORY OF KOREA 

their relievers, gave way and raised the siege, suffer- 
ing heavy loss as they retreated. 

Notwithstanding this defeat, the Chinese were still 
in such strength that they were able to confine the 
Japanese to their entrenched camps in the south- 
eastern corner of the peninsula ; and while the Chinese 
were being constantly reinforced from their own 
country and by Koreans, Hideyoshi, disappointed at 
the failure to advance on the capital, and now prob- 
ably so sick of the cost and losses of the war that 
he was only awaiting a favourable opportunity to 
make overtures for peace, withdrew sixty thousand 
men to Japan. He had another vital reason for this 
step. His own health was rapidly failing. His whole 
ambition now was to secure the succession to his 
infant son, and to that end he wished before he 
died to have all the available strength of an army 
on the devotion of whose officers he could rely close 
at his hand. Only sixty thousand Japanese soldiers 
were now left in Korea, but these were sufficient to 
hold their own against repeated attempts to dislodge 
them by greatly superior forces of both Chinese and 
Koreans. The last great battle was fought at So- 
chon, twenty miles due west of Fusan. Here an 
attack of the allies was beaten off by the Japanese 
with such slaughter that after the battle nearly thirty- 
nine thousand Chinese heads were gathered from the 
field. They were too numerous to send as trophies to 
Japan, so the ears and noses were cut off and sent 
in their place. This battle was fought on the 30th 
of October, and the soldiers had scarcely had time to 
rest after their gruesome task of packing the ears 
and noses had been completed when the news came 
that Hideyoshi was dead and that his dying words 
were, M Don't let my soldiers become ghosts in Korea." 
His closing days were darkened by the thought that 
all their sacrifices had been in vain and nothing 



HIDEYOSHI'S INVASION 191 

better than they had done could be hoped for in the 
future. However ruthlessly he had sacrificed them 
when his ambition and revenge still seemed open to 
gratification, his last thoughts were how to withdraw 
them with honour. 

The provisional Government which assumed office 
in Japan on his death hastened to fulfil his wishes. 
The country was sick of the war, and it seemed only 
too likely that there would soon be full employment 
for all the soldiers in their own country — that Japan 
would soon again be in the agonies of civil war. One 
more episode has to be told. After the disgrace of 
Won Kiun, the old admiral Yi Sun was restored to 
his rank and command. He reorganised the fleet, (and 
by his tact completely won the goodwill of the 
Chinese admiral, who brought a large Chinese fleet 
to co-operate with him. The Japanese evacuation 
was carried out with great haste. Neither the Swiss 
nor the Irish are a greater prey to the effects of 
nostalgia than are the Japanese. Even in their own 
country they suffer from it when away from their 
native districts, and few are able to bear long ex- 
patriation. Some of the soldiers had been detained 
in Korea from the first invasion, and they and their 
more newly arrived comrades were one and all yearn- 
ing for home with a heart-sick longing that was 
impatient of delay. The moment permission came 
for them to leave Korea they crowded into transports 
without heed to the possible danger of the passage 
over seas on which they had now no naval security. 
They had scarcely started from Fusan when the allied 
fleets swooped down on one large division and 
destroyed many of the scattered Japanese ships, 
both convoys and transports. In this last fight 
Yi Sun died as Nelson died, shot on his own quarter- 
deck but surviving long enough to know that the war 
was ended by a Korean victory on the seas on which 
they had won their first great success. 



192 THE STORY OF KOREA 

The Japanese who escaped the allied fleets and 
reached their homes brought back with them large 
quantities of plunder. All the art treasures of Korea 
which they had not given to the flames they carried 
away with them, leaving Korea denuded of all her 
mementoes of the days in which her artists possessed 
a high degree of skill. Along with the art treasures 
they brought with them as prisoners of war many 
of the artists and skilled artisans who were settled 
in Japan and never permitted to return to their own 
land, and who are the ancestors of the Japanese 
potters whose work now commands the enthusiastic 
admiration of the connoisseurs of the West. They 
also brought back with them the practice of smoking. 
Tobacco had been made known to the Japanese by 
the Portuguese traders several years before the 
Korean War ; but it was during the war that its use 
spread among the soldiers, and they, on their return, 
introduced it among their compatriots at large, and 
laid the foundation of a national habit that is now 
almost universal among 1 both men and women. 
Opposite the great temple of Daibutsu in Kioto, the 
building of which was seventeen years later the 
remote cause of the ruin of Hideyoshi's only son, a 
mound stands, capped by a stone monument, which 
is shown to every European visitor to the ancient 
capital of Japan as the Mimi Dzuka, or "ear mound." 
It is the grave of the ears and noses cut off, not 
only from the slain in battle but even from living 
Korean prisoners of war, and sent to Hideyoshi as 
evidence of his soldiers' exploits. 

Plunder which, however large to the units of the 
army, was insignificant from the national point of 
view, a few colonies of artists and skilled artisans, 
the use of tobacco, and the Mimi Dzuka were all 
the acquisitions that Japan had to show as the result 
of one of the most reckless, wanton, and cruel wars 



HIDEYOSHIS INVASION 193 

that is told of in the history of the world, undertaken 
solely for the gratification of the ambition and vanity 
of one man. Its cost to the Japanese was a heavy 
one. More than three hundred thousand soldiers 
were employed in the first invasion, and the number 
of those in the second exceeded one hundred and 
thirty thousand. More than fifty thousand of these 
were left dead in Korea. Many more were 
missing, stragglers or deserters from the retreating 
or starving armies who were captured by the Koreans, 
and who were lost to their own people among the 
Korean mountains, where they became absorbed in 
the native population. 

All the value of the plunder brought to Japan 
was not a minute fraction of that of the treasure 
that had been expended. Military glory was the 
great asset of the war, and even that was not un- 
tarnished. Soldiers, who were veterans in themselves, 
who inherited all the instincts and traditions of pro- 
genitors who had been continuously fighting for two 
hundred years under experienced and skilful generals, 
armed with the best weapons of their time, at first 
carried all before them in overwhelming triumph ; 
but their career of victory was broken when they 
were confronted with the well equipped and disci- 
plined soldiers of another great power and when the 
whole of an outraged people rose in fury against 
their rapacity and cruelty. 

It was not long before the Koreans were avenged. 
^Within two years the soldiers and the two greatest 
of the generals who had slaughtered them were in 
arms against each other. Kato, the anti-Christian, 
took the winning side, and lived in wealth and honour 
till a green old age, and after his death was deified 
and is still worshipped, not only as a national hero 
but as a Buddhist divinity. Konishi, the devout 
Christian, the pride of the Jesuit missionaries, was 

13 



194 THE STORY OF KOREA 

on the side of the losers, and his head fell beneath 
the executioner's sword on the common execution- 
ground at Kioto only two years after the evacuation 
of Korea. Hideyoshi's only son perished in the 
destruction of the great castle which his father had 
built at Osaka, and with him died the last member of 
the dynasty which it was the great tyrant's ambi- 
tion to establish in power for ever, an ambition of 
which the Korean War was one of the side-issues. 

The ruin and humiliation inflicted on Korea were 
in inverse ratio to the gain and glory to Japan. Her 
population was more than decimated in battle, by 
famine, and by disease. The support of her Chinese 
allies had been almost as great a burthen to her as 
the plundering of her foes. Between the two the 
unhappy native had starved, and famine had brought 
in its train cholera and typhus to complete its work 1 . 
The horrors that were witnessed after the Japanese 
evacuation of Seoul, not only in the capital itself 
but throughout the ravaged province would not bear 
telling in these pages. The King had been forced 
to seek safety in flight ; the capital and the two most 
ancient towns, both the seats of former capitals, both 
rich in every tradition of history and religion that 
appealed to the veneration and pride of the people, 
had been occupied and sacked with remorseless 
cruelty ; industries had been destroyed, and the 
followers so exterminated that the industries vanished 
from Korea for ever, and the whole people were left 
with such memories of suffering and outrage that 
to this day M the accursed nation " continues to be 
a common vernacular term in Korea for Japan. 

We have told the story of the war at some length, 
but it might have been considerably extended had 
not the limits of our space confined us to its general 
outlines and forbidden us to tell of the many instances 
of individual heroism which took place on both sides. 



HIDEYOSHrS INVASION 195 

It is in itself an interesting chapter in the world's 
history that has not been without its effect on modern 
politics in the Far East. It is specifically interesting 
as one that affords a very vivid illustration of the 
value of sea power, as the one which gives us the 
first recorded instance of an ironclad in action and 
of the use of bombs in sieges. 



CHAPTER X 

CHOSEN. SECOND PERIOD 

For fifteen years after the conclusion of the Korean 
War, Japan had her hands full enough at home to take 
away all thought of meddling with affairs beyond 
her borders. When the capture of the castle pf 
Osaka and the death of Hideyoshi's only son removed 
the last obstacle which stood in the path of Iyeyasu's 
ambition, and the founder of the Tokugawa Shoguns 
was firmly established as the autocratic ruler of the 
Empire, his thoughts reverted to the scenes of Hide- 
yoshi's foreign campaigns, and to the renewal of official 
relations with Korea. Fusan had never been entirely 
abandoned by the Japanese, and trade in a very in- 
significant way had continued from the close of the 
war to be carried on between Fusan and Tsushima, 
but there was no official intercourse between the 
two Governments. Repeated informal requests were 
conveyed from the Court of the Shogun at Yedo 
to the Koreans through the feudatory of Tsushima 
that they should resume the old custom of sending 
tribute -bearing embassies to Japan ; but it was not 
until 1 617, when Iyeyasu was dead and his son 
Hidetada, the second Tokugawa Shogun, ruled in 
his stead, that they at last consented. At this time 
the first English representatives of the East India 
Company were in Japan, endeavouring to acquire a 
share in the profitable trade that the Portuguese at 
first, and the Dutch later on, had for some years 

196 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 197 

carried on at Nagasaki and Hirado. Cocks, the head 
of the English adventurers, had just been summoned 
to Yedo from Hirado, and his overland journey was 
made almost simultaneously with that of the first 
Korean embassy. 

From his description of the embassy and of the 
arrangements made for its reception, it is evident 
that the Shogun was more than gratified by this testi- 
monial to his greatness, and that he was anxious on 
his side to render every attention that international 
courtesy demanded, and to wipe out all memory of 
the affronts that Hideyoshi had heaped on the un- 
fortunate Korean missions before the war. At 
Hirado, where the ambassador landed with a suite 
which numbered in all more than five hundred 
persons, the local feudatory deputed his brother and 
twenty of the richest and handsomest of his vassals 
to wait on him, and at every town at which he 
stayed while on his way from Hirado to Yedo 
new houses were by order built for his recep- 
tion, and all the necessities for his journey, both 
by land and water, provided for him with regal 
liberality at the Shogun's cost. The embassy passed 
through the great commercial city of Osaka, the 
actual scene of Hideyoshi's insults twenty-seven years 
before, " in very pompous sort," with trumpeters and 
11 hobboys " sounding before them. Cocks was a little 
in advance of them throughout the journey. He had 
hoped to gain an interview with the ambassador and, 
in his ignorance of Korean exclusiveness, to pave the 
way for opening up a trade between England and 
Korea, which might be as profitable to the first 
European adventurers in the field as that with Japan 
had been to the Portuguese and Dutch. But fortune 
did not favour him. He had no interview, and the 
only direct result of the embassy to him was that, 
arriving a little in its advance at Fushimi, on the road 



198 THE STORY OF KOREA 

between Osaka and Kioto, where its coming was 
expected, he and his sailors were mistaken by the 
inhabitants for the more distinguished visitors who 
were on their way, and the streets were in their 
honour hastily strewed with sand and gravel, and 
"multitudes thronged to see us." 

Thenceforward peaceful relations continued be- 
tween Japan and Korea. Every year a mission bear- 
ing presents came to Yedo, all the expenses of its 
journey from Tsushima being defrayed by the rich 
Shoguns, who gladly paid this price for the tribute 
that was rendered to their vanity. This custom con- 
tinued till close on the end of the eighteenth century, 
when it began to pall on the sated palates of the 
Shoguns and to seem a luxury too dearly purchased 
by its cost. The Koreans were then told that their 
mission need come no farther than Tsushima, where 
it could discharge its offices with the local feudatory 
as the representative of the Shogun. Through all 
these years a Japanese trading factory was main- 
tained at Fusan under conditions not very dissimilar 
to those under which the Dutch were, at the same 
time, trading with the Japanese at Nagasaki. The 
Japanese at Fusan were not, as were the Dutch at 
Nagasaki, compelled to make an annual pilgrimage 
to the capital at a cost the enormity of which was 
a constant sore in the hearts of the frugal Dutchmen 
in Japan, nor to temporarily convert themselves into 
buffoons for the entertainment of courtiers who re- 
garded them as pariahs, almost as vermin, but the 
members of the factory were rigidly confined within 
its narrow limits and never permitted to proceed into 
the interior of the country, not even to enter the 
closely neighbouring prefectural town of Tongnai ; the 
number of their ships that were pertnitted to discharge 
or load in the harbour each year was strictly limited, 
and every mercantile transaction, whether of sale or 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 199 

purchase, took place under official supervision at 
appointed hours on two or three fixed occasions in 
each year. While, however, subjected to these com- 
mercial restrictions, the Japanese were present at 
Fusan rather as the English at Calais than the Dutch 
at Nagasaki — not like the latter, humble, cringing 
suppliants, willing to submit to any personal degrada- 
tion for the sake of the golden harvest which was 
yearly reaped by them, but like the English, tena- 
ciously clinging to the last vestige of their conquest 
of the whole country. 

The factory was under the control of S5, the feudal 
prince of Tsushima, the direct descendant of Hide- 
yoshi's envoy and general, and a garrison of his 
men-at-arms was maintained in it, not so much for 
the protection of the traders, who had nothing to fear, 
but as the symbol of conquest. Its presence was as 
galling to the national pride of the Koreans as was 
that of British and French troops in Yokohama to 
the Japanese themselves two hundred years later ; 
but the first Korean ambassador in vain asked that 
both soldiers and factory should be removed from 
Fusan, and Tsushima made the depot of trade be- 
tween the two countries. The Japanese continued 
to cling to their holding till the last chapter, when 
Fusan became what is called in the Far East " an open 
port " — i.e., a maritime city in which the subjects of 
other countries have the right under treaty provisions 
to reside and trade. The Koreans, on the other hand, 
" saved their faces " by the following explanation of 
the exception in favour of the Japanese of their policy 
of national isolation : 

" In the reign of Sejong (1419-50) several barbarians from 
the Island of Tsushima left their homes and settled themselves 
at Fusan and two other small ports on the shores of Korea 
The number of the settlers increased quickly. When Chong. 
Jong (1506-45) had been five years on the throne these 



200 THE STORY OF KOREA 

barbarians made a disturbance and in one night destroyed the 
walls of Fusan and killed the prefect. They were suppressed 
by the Government troops and being then no longer able to live 
in these ports they withdrew into the interior. A little later, how- 
ever, they asked pardon for their misdeeds and were accordingly 
permitted to settle themselves anew in their old quarters. Their 
stay in them did not last long, for shortly before 1592 they returned 
to their own homes. In 1599 King Sunjo had some interchange 
of letters with the Tsushima barbarians with the result that he 
invited them to their old settlements, where he built houses for them, 
treated them with kindness, and for their sakes held a market, 
lasting for five days from the 3rd of every month. He even 
permitted the market to be held more frequently when they had a 
very large quantity of goods." * 

There is some historical foundation for the events 
here alluded to, but the manner in which the com- 
mercial closing of the settlement during its military 
occupation by Hideyoshi's invading armies from 1592 
onwards is passed over, the suggested inference that 
the Japanese obtained as suppliants what they de- 
manded or took at the sword's point, and their 
description as " barbarians " are illustrations of the 
methods of pandering to their own vanity which the 
Koreans had learned from their Chinese suzerain. 

Before the Koreans entered on the long period 
of peace which left them: undisturbed in their national 
isolation for nearly two and a half centuries, they 
had to experience once more the humiliation and 
suffering of foreign invasion, to see their country, 
desolated as it had been from end to end by Hide- 
yoshi, once more prostrate at the feet of a foreign 
conqueror. We have told how, in turn, Korea found 
her suzerain in the Kin, Mongol, and Ming emperors 
of China, how the Kins were dethroned by the 
Mongols, both coming from the northern steppes of 
Asia and both aliens to the Chinese, and how the 
Mongols were in turn overthrown by the Mings, pure 
1 Dallet, " Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree," vol. i. 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 201 

Chinese, who ruled the Empire from 1368 to 1644. 
Then the Mings were overthrown and China fell under 
the rule of the Manchus, people of the same stock 
as the Kins, who have retained possession of the 
Imperial throne till this day. 

The origin of the Manchus is wrapped in mythical 
romance. Three " heaven-born virgins " were bathing 
in a lake which lay near the Ever White Mountains, 
the northern frontier of Korea, when a magpie as it 
flew past dropped a blood-red fruit, which the 
youngest of the three took and ate. She immediately 
conceived and bore a son, who, when his mother 
died, descended the River Hurka (a tributary of 
the Sungari, whose source is in the White Moun- 
tains) and became the chief of the local tribes. From 
him and his tribesmen the Manchus trace their 
descent. At the beginning of the seventeenth century 
they were a formidable power controlling the whole 
of Manchuria, and in the year 1 6 1 6 they were strong 
enough to invade Northern China and to defeat the 
Imperial Chinese army which was sent against them 
and to declare themselves independent. A few years 
later they established their capital at Mukden. At 
this period China was once more rent with internal 
disturbances, and taking advantage of them, the 
Manchus for the second time invaded the Empire 
and captured not only Peking but Nanking. The 
last Emperor of the Mings, driven from both his 
northern and southern capitals, in despair drowned 
himself in the Yang-Tsze, and in 1644 the first of 
the Manchu emperors was crowned in his stead. 

Into the wars that preceded this event, which from 
first to last spread over twenty-eight years, unhappy 
Korea was dragged by her duty to her suzerain. 
From the Mings Korea had experienced nothing but 
kindness. They had nobly come to her rescue when 
she was beaten to her knees by Japan, and it was 



202 THE STORY OF KOREA 

owing to their help that the invaders had been forced 
to evacuate her capital and retreat in haste to their 
fortified lines on the coast. The Mings, when their 
own hour of trial came, in their turn sought Korea's 
aid in their struggle against the Manchus, and not in 
vain. In 1619 twenty thousand Koreans joined the 
Chinese army and along with it suffered a crushing 
defeat by the Manchus. This loyalty to their old 
suzerain was then further tested. The Manchu victor 
sent back all his Korean prisoners and deserters, 
saying that "as of old the Chinese sent assistance 
to the Koreans it was very natural and right that 
the Chinese should now be assisted by them, and that 
he was therefore not in the least offended by their 
fidelity to their allies." Korea had thus an oppor- 
tunity to withdraw with honour ; but so far from that, 
she remained firm 1 in her duty to the Mings and did 
not even thank the Manchu for his proffered gener- 
osity. She had to pay dearly for her fidelity. 

The Manchus could not leave such an enemy on 
their flank and rear, and their second invasion of 
China was preceded by one of Korea. In February, 
1627, they crossed the Yalu on the ice and rapidly 
drove the Koreans in rout before them the whole way 
from the frontier to the capital. Once more, as his 
predecessor Jiad done in 1231 before the Mongols, the 
King fled and endeavoured to find refuge in the time- 
honoured sanctuary at Kang Wha. Here he was safe, 
for the Manchus had, no more than the Mongols, the 
means of crossing the river, but he made overtures 
of peace which were accepted, and a treaty was 
concluded between him and Manchu envoys on the 
island. " At the ratification a white horse and a 
black ox were sacrificed, and a paper with the treaty 
provisions was burnt to inform Heaven and Earth." 
By this treaty Korea recognised the Manchus as her 
future suzerains. The two people were henceforth 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 203 

to be " as elder and younger brothers/' a relation- 
ship which, according to the Confucian ethics, in- 
volves, after the parent's death, the most absolute 
control of the younger by the elder, who is entitled 
to dispose or utilise as he will the property land 
services, even the life, of the younger. Korea did 
not keep the engagement so solemnly ratified. Her 
old reverence and affection for the Mings were still 
strong, and it was impossible to transfer them en 
bloc to the new power. She did not render the usual 
tribute, and what she did send she called a present 
instead of tribute : she refused to give up refugees 
in her territory, and absolutely refused to co-operate 
in any invasion of China ; her envoy to the Manchu 
Court assumed an air of equality with the Manchu 
leaders, and at last in 1636 the Manchu patience 
was exhausted, and it was determined to bring the 
recalcitrant vassal to her senses. 

Early in the following year an army of one hundred 
thousand men once again entered Korea from the 
north, and the old, old story was repeated, with the same 
harrowing details of defeat, slaughter, and plunder of 
the unhappy country and its people. The Court was 
again removed to Kang Wha, but the King in person 
maintained a valiant defence of his capital. He 
hoped for aid from China, but China's own troubles 
were enough for her and she could give none. Sallies 
from the beleaguered city and relieving forces from 
the south and west of Korea were alike beaten back 
by the invincible Manchus ; the country around the 
city was devastated, provisions were exhausted, and 
famine threatened its defenders and inhabitants ; but 
the courage of the King did not give way till he heard 
that the Manchus had taken Kang Wha and that the 
Queen, the Crown Prince, and all the ladies of the 
Royal Family and the Court, as well as the wives 
of many of the principal nobles, were in their hands. 



204 THE STORY OF KOREA 

The Manchus had obtained the use of boats, and, 
once on the island, their numbers overwhelmed its 
slender garrison. All the ladies were courteously 
treated by their captors, but the King bent his head 
to this last blow and humbly sued for forgiveness 
and peace. Both were granted, but on hard terms. 
The King had, not only to formally renounce for 
ever his allegiance to his former suzerain but to 
promise aid against him in war ; to render faith- 
fully to the Manchus the loyalty he had given to 
the Mings ; to pay a heavy tribute ; to promise that 
he would build no fortresses without Manchu per- 
mission ; and finally to give the Crown Prince as 
a hostage for the faithful observance of these 
obligations. 

The crushed King accepted these conditions, " bow- 
ing to the ground." An interview with the victor 
followed. The King, the princes, and all the 
ministers were received in a yellow tent, yellow being 
the Imperial colour in China, where conqueror and 
conquered joined in worshipping Heaven. Then the 
'King and all his retinue prostrated themselves on 
the ground, and implored pardon for their crimes. 
This was the last of his humiliations. When it was 
over he was asked to seat himself on the left hand of 
the Manchu chief, the place of honour according to 
Eastern ideas, above all the Manchu princes. 

The suzerainty of the Manchus proved to be less 
severe than the terms of peace warranted. Several 
years elapsed before Korea reconciled herself to it, 
during which she gave several causes of offence, 
but all her hopes of a reversal of ill-fortune, of a 
return to her old friends and suzerains, were ended 
when, in 1644, the Ming dynasty came to an end 
on the death of the last of the race, and that of 
the Manchus was firmly established on the Imperial 
throne. It was part of the policy of the Manchus 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 205 

never to push their conquests to extremes, and when 
the fighting was over to spare the vanquished who 
yielded. They were even more conciliatory to the 
Koreans than they were to the Chinese. On the latter 
they imposed the pigtail and the Manchu dress. The 
Koreans were left free to follow their hereditary 
customs. No cession of any part of their territory 
was asked for. The tribute which they bound them- 
selves to render was reduced again and again, and 
little more was exacted than a formal annual embassy 
to Peking and the proper observance by it of the 
ceremonial that is due from 1 the messengers of a 
vassal to his suzerain. On the other hand, when 
famine threatened or visited Korea, as it often 
naturally did in a country dependent solely on its 
own harvests, whose laws prevented it supplying its 
deficiencies from foreign markets, large gifts of rice 
were freely and generously sent to her help from 
China. 

From the year in which the Manchu rule was 
firmly established throughout China, Korea wrapped 
herself in a mantle of isolation from all the world. | 
She had acquired through China, through Japan, and 
also through the very few shipwrecked Europeans 
who had fallen into her hands, a dim knowledge 
that there were other countries in the world, but they 
did not concern her. Only her two immediate neigh- 
bours, China and Japan, were definitely known to 
her, and from both she had throughout almost the 
whole course of her history suffered bitterly. China 
had been her friend and protector, and had given her 
the literature and civilisation which she had acquired 
in a high degree. But it had been also a ruthless 
invader who time and time again had ravaged all 
her northern provinces, and even when driven back 
in defeat had left ruin and desolation behind. From 
Japan she had experienced nothing but suffering. 



206 THE STORY OF KOREA 

She it was who gave to Japan the religion, laws, 
art, science, and social system which she had herself 
received from China, and which were the foundation 
of all Japan's advanced civilisation for more than 
twelve hundred years, and she might, therefore, have 
looked to Japan for a meed of the respect whjich 
she rendered to China. Instead of that she had no 
memories except of the horrors of one of the most 
cruel and unprovoked invasions that the history of 
the world records, and of ruthless marauders on her 
coasts, who through unbroken centuries had made 
their names a terror to all her citizens. 

Korea now thought that her only safeguard for 
the future was to maintain as little intercourse with 
both China and Japan as was compatible with the 
preservation of peace, and to endeavour to persuade 
both that she had nothing within her own borders 
that could appeal to the cupidity of either. The 
Japanese who traded with her were, as before stated, 
rigidly confined within the limits of their petty factory 
at Fusan. On her northern frontier a strip of neutral 
territory thirty miles in width was deliberately laid 
in waste, and became only the haunt of savage wild 
beasts and of still more savage human outlaws and 
brigands, so that none could pass through it even 
along the great high-road which led all the way 
from Seoul to Peking unaccompanied by strong 
guards. Three times every year a market was opened 
for a few days at the Border Gate, close to the 
modern city of Fung Wang Chang, and there Korean 
and Chinese traders met and exchanged their goods, 
the Koreans bartering ginseng, the most highly prized 
drug in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, furs, paper, 
and gold, all of high value in proportion to their 
weight or bulk, and therefore capable of cheap and 
easy transport by land, for the many industrial pro- 
ducts of China and, as years went on, Jor European 




PASS ON THE PEKING ROAD. 

{From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 206. 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 207 

cottons and metal manufactures brought from the 
open ports of China. That was all the intercourse 
which the people could hold with their continental 
neighbours ; and even for that heavily taxed licences 
had to be obtained, and woe betide the returning 
Korean who could not exhibit his licence at the 
barriers of his own strictly watched frontier town 
of Aichin ! 

Once every year a great embassy was sent to 
Peking to tender the duties of the vassal King to 
his suzerain Emperor, and it stayed for a month in 
the Manehu capital. The Koreans adhered to their 
dress and coiffure of the Ming period, both abolished 
in China by the Manohus, and the inhabitants of the 
Chinese capital used to see at each Korean visit the 
same garb in actual use as had been worn by their 
forbears of several generations back. It was as if 
the United States citizens who yearly visit England 
wore the dress and practised the gait and demeanour 
that were in vogue in the early years of George III. 
Once every year a return visit was made to 
Seoul by a high envoy of the Chinese Emperor, 
but under very different conditions. The Koreans 
during their stay at Peking wandered freely through 
the streets and saw without hindrance all that they 
cared to see, and associated freely with the people. 
No obstacle was placed even on their intercourse 
with the European missionaries, whose influence was 
destined to produce important results. The Chinese 
ambassador was met by the King in person outside 
the city gate, and every possible honour that could 
testify the most profound respect was rendered to 
him ; but he and his suite only remained a few days 
in Seoul, interned the whole time in their lodgings^ 
and every means was taken to obscure from them' 
such wealth and resources as Korea possessed. 
Korea's isolation continued unbroken for over two 



208 THE STORY OF KOREA 

hundred and thirty years, during which she went her 
own way, uninterfered with by the outside world. 
Japan's period of isolation, nearly co-existent with 
that of Korea, was equally long and equally rigid. 
But during it Japan was strongly and ably governed, 
her people enjoyed, not only freedom from foreign 
aggression but internal peace, and the lower orders 
of her people, though no better than serfs as far as 
the enjoyment went of political rights or freedom, 
were secure in their property, and were able to live 
lives of comfort and safety. Her Government, firmly 
established on well-defined principles, was adminis- 
tered by capable officials, honest according to their 
lights, taken from a limited and highly privileged class 
but chosen from that class for their capacity and 
trustworthiness, and their powers and authority were 
circumscribed within limits which were always recog- 
nised and could only be crossed at infinite peril to 
the life, rank, family, and property of their violator. 
In the testament in which the great founder of the 
Tokugawa Shoguns bequeathed to his descendants 
the principles of statecraft by which he directed they 
should be guided, he told them that " the People are 
the Foundation of the Empire " and that they were to 
choose as their ministers " true men," not those " who 
endeavour to win favour by adulation, flattery, or 
bribery.' ' These directions were faithfully observed. 
The commons of Japan enjoyed happy and tranquil 
lives of such security, prosperity, and comfort, that 
they became the most light-hearted and laughter - 
loving people on earth, full of the joys of life, in- 
dustrious, ingenious, and artistic, and the whole 
Empire, in the words of Kaempfer, " a school of 
civility and good manners, in which the happiness 
and innocence of former ages were revived." 

In Korea everything was the reverse of what was 
seen in Japan. Between 1644 and 1876 twelve kings 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 209 

successively sat on the throne, all of the line of Taijo. 
Among these were some strong and capable rulers 
who instituted important reforms intended particu- 
larly for the amelioration of the condition of the 
lower classes of their people. Hijo Jung (1649- 
59), during whose reign Hamel and his comrades 
were shipwrecked and held as prisoners in Korea, 
abolished the punishment of beating criminals to 
death, lightened taxation, and renovated the military 
system. He also distinguished himself as a dress 
reformer, and the Korean Court dress continued to 
the reign of the last of the kings to conform to 
his designs. His successor, Hyong Jong (1660-74) 
came to the throne as a boy, but he followed in his 
father's steps as a reformer, aided and advised in 
all he did by a powerful Prime Minister who served 
him throughout his reign. Some of the heaviest 
burdens of taxation were remitted, and the King 
curtailed his own personal expenditure to meet the 
deficiencies in the royal revenue. Men were for- 
bidden by him to desert their families in order to 
become Buddhist priests so that they might pass 
their lives in the ease and licence that were associated 
with the monasteries, and the practice was also for- 
bidden of taking girls by force to be used as palace 
women, not necessarily as concubines, but as ladies 
or servants of the Court, a position in which perpetual 
chastity was a rigid rule. Much was done by him 
to spread education in the districts of the Kingdom 
remote from the capital, which his predecessors had 
neglected, and generally every department of the 
State, every condition of social life, felt the benefit 
of his reforming hand. 

Yung Jong (1724-6) was another King distin- 
guished in Korean history for the series of reforms 
effected during his long reign, prominent among them 
being the measures which he took for the enforcement 

U 



210 THE STORY OF KOREA 

of temperance. He is perhaps the sole instance in all 
the history of the world of a monarch or even of a 
legislator who absolutely prohibited the manufacture, 
sale, or use of intoxicating liquors, and who in his 
ardour as a temperance reformer made the violation 
of his prohibition a capital offence and took care 
to secure that the law was no dead letter. When a 
high provincial official was found transgressing in his 
own district far away from the capital, where no doubt 
he thought he would be safe from discovery, the 
King not only ordered him to be executed but went 
in person to see the sentence carried out. Compulsory 
temperance only continued during the life of the 
King, which was, however, a long one. A similar 
revulsion to that which England witnessed when the 
Restoration put an end to the rigid austerity of puri- 
tanical legislation took place in Korea, and there are 
no harder or more constant drinkers in the world 
than the Koreans. The vice is common to all classes. 
It is the greatest happiness that can fall to the 
commoner to drown his cares in the forgetfulness of 
intoxication, and when he is able to do so he is the 
envy of his neighbours. Drunkenness is no more 
a discredit to the nobles than it was to the English 
country squire in the days of George II., and among 
the present-day imports from Japan no unsubstantial 
place is taken by French brandy, Scotch whisky, 
Russian Vodka, and Dutch gin, all in splendidly be- 
labelled bottles with gilded capsules, the industrial 
output of Osaka and Nagasaki, which are retailed, 
with a handsome commercial profit, at one shilling 
per bottle. 

The great merit which clings to this King's name 
is the revolution which he made in the social system 
of the nation by the emancipation of the serfs. Until 
his reign Korean society was composed of only two 
classes, nobles (Yang ban) and serfs. Whoever was 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 211 

not a noble was the bond serf of a noble, bound: 
to the soil, and liable even to be sold along with his 
family at his liege lord's pleasure. All the serfs 
were enfranchised with personal freedom by the 
King. It is sad to say that the apostle of temperance 
and liberty became in his old age, altogether without 
cause, jealous and suspicious of his son and heir, 
and left a blot on his otherwise fair name by the 
cruel murder of his son, who was shut in a chest 
and slowly starved to death. 

The kings that have been mentioned were the 
good kings of the line since 1644. All of them, 
whatever their merits, had the vices of cruelty as 
judged by present-day standards, and the instance 
that has just been given was only horrible in the 
eyes of Koreans from the fact that the sufferer was 
the King's own son and the recognised heir-apparent 
to the throne. The greatest virtues of all of them 
were the thought they gave to the welfare of the 
common people and the cessation which they 
enforced, during their reigns, of party strife at their 
courts. In each case one of the great parties re- 
mained in power throughout nearly the whole reign, 
and the others, when they attempted to assert them- 
selves, to overthrow their opponents in office, had 
to pay a bitter reckoning. Their leaders and 
members were executed, murdered, banished, or fined 
without mercy. The kings whose names have not 
been given, weak, indolent, indulgent, and debauched, 
were worthy of the description, taken from the writings 
of the French priests, that has been given in a previous 
chapter. Some of them came to the throne as boys 
and were under the tutorship of their mothers or 
grandmothers, who held the regency during the Kings' 
minorities. However weak the character of Korean 
women in general may have been rendered by their 
moral subjection, however insignificant a factor they 



212 THE STORY OF KOREA 

have become in all social life, some of those who 
have been on or near the throne have shown them- 
selves very strong and determined women, capable 
of using to the utmost at their own will the powers 
with which they were vested. Two of the female 
regents are mainly responsible for the merciless 
persecutions of the Christians, and in our own day, in 
the chequered reigh of the last of the kings who can 
be said to have governed, two ladies played, as will 
be seen hereafter, a great part on the political stage. 

Neither female regent nor weak kings were able 
to check the political strife which 1 was the curse 
of the nation. Both alike were subject to the latest 
partisan favourites or councillors to catch their ears, 
and these used their influence with king or regent 
solely for the advancement and enrichment of them- 
selves and their relatives. The Court was a imiaelstrom 
of intrigue, in which bribery, false accusations, 
assassination, and conspiracy were the only weapons 
used by either party. There were no foreign politics, 
no platform on which all ctould unite in the common 
interest, and the hatred which! in other parts of the 
world was exhausted on foreign foes had in Korea 
to find its only outlet on domestic rivals. Patriotism 
was never thought of ; and so deeply had the canker 
eaten into the body politic that even when, in our 
own time, Korea was brought face to face with the 
world and her national existence threatened by Russia 
on the one side and Japan on the other, foreign policy 
was only a new weapon for use in domestic party 
strife, and it is to this party strife that the ultimate 
national downfall was mainly due. 

Amidst it all the people had no place. To the eyes 
of the nobles they were as negro slaves to the old 
Virginian planter, as Celtic peasants to the Protestant 
garrison of Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. They counted for nothing : they were 




TOMB NEAR SEOUL. 

{From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 212. 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 213 

hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose spolia- 
tion was a prize for which rival parties strove, and the 
victors ruthlessly, pitilessly, barbarously extorted 
from them, to the least fraction, what were the only 
spoils of office, not sparing them even when, as often 
happened, famine and its attendant, cholera, were 
spreading desolation and death far and wide. Under 
such government it was inevitable that the people 
should become what they have been described in a 
previous chapter — the most miserable, hopeless, 
apathetic on earth. With a people whose lives were 
cast in squalid poverty on which no ray of brightness 
ever fell, from which there was no possible avenue 
of escape,, and a nobility all whose energy and thought 
were exhausted on party strife, the country could 
make no progress in art, science, or industry ; and 
the civilisation of Korea shoNved no material advance 
in 1876, when Japan forced the first treaty on her, 
on what she had been when Hideyoshi's armies were 
withdrawn nearly three hundred years previously. 

In 1864 the twenty -ninth King of the dynasty, 
one of the weakest of the whole line, died childless, 
without having exercised his prerogative of nominat- 
ing an heir. The Queen -Dowager, the widow of a 
former king, took the duty upon herself, and having 
wrested by actual physical strength the Royal Seal 
from the widow of the late King, while his body- 
was still warm, and thus fortified herself with the 
symbol of royal authority, she nominated to the throne 
a boy of twelve years of age, whose father, one of the 
royal princes, was the grandson of King Sunjo 
(1800-34). The father had hitherto been a 
nonentity in the Court ; and with a boy King and 
an indifferent father the old Queen contemplated 
for herself a long regency. But no sooner was his son 
safe on the throne than the father at once showed 
himself in an entirely new light. The Queen was 



214 THE STORY OF KOREA 

ousted, and thenceforward the Court idler became a 
determined statesman, assumed the regency, and was 
for nine years the most prominent figure in the 
administrative life of the kingdom and till his death, 
in 1898, he was the most prominent factor in 
political life. He is known as the Tai Won Kun, 
i(" the Lord of the Great Court "), and his son was ( the 
last de facto King of Korea, who reigned until his 
abdication, in 1907. The French missionaries de- 
scribed him, in the early years of his regency, as 
brusque, self-willed, and passionate, weak in body, 
but with a strong constitution, with fierce eyes that 
rolled incessantly in their sockets. In after years he 
showed himself cruel and vindictive, always restless 
and ambitious, unscrupulous in all his methods, and 
prepared to clear the way for the gratification of his 
ambition by murder and conspiracy. 

While still a boy — two years after his accession to 
the throne — the King was married to a bride chosen 
for him by his father, a lady of the Min family, one of 
the oldest in the Korean nobility. The Tai Won Kun 
anticipated that the lady, if she took any part at all in 
politics, would from gratitude, if for no other reason, 
be devoted to his interests. His anticipations were 
quickly falsified. The lady was devoted, not to the 
Regent, to whom she owed her throne, but to the family 
from which she sprang, and the great influence which 
she acquired on the King was, throughout her life, 
used unsparingly for their advancement. She was a 
woman of great intelligence, of strong character, well 
read in Chinese literature, intimately acquainted with 
the history of her own country, and in after years 
her intellectual capacity enabled her to acquire a 
grasp of foreign affairs which, together with her 
marked conversational powers, aroused the admira- 
tion of Count Inouye, 1 the veteran statesman of Japan. 

1 Now Marquis Inouye. 



CHOSEN— SECOND PERIOD 215 

She was slight of stature ; but her diminutive body 
contained a great, courageous heart, and bright, 
sparkling eyes reflected the brilliant intellect that 
was behind them. She soon incurred the bitter hatred 
of the Regent. Spurred by her influence, the King 
assumed the full exercise of his own prerogatives and 
the administration of the kingdom in 1873, and the 
Tai Won Kun was forced to retire from office. The 
Queen's brother was appointed Chief Minister, and 
the Tai Won Kun promptly caused him, his mother, 
and his son to be murdered by a bomb. Twice his 
hatred for the Queen induced him to encourage con- 
spiracies against the King, his own son. Twice he 
instigated attempts on the life of the Queen, the last 
of which was successful. Until 1873 he governed 
as an absolute ruler. Always a bigoted and intolerant 
Conservative, he was bitterly opposed to even a 
semblance of relationship with Europeans, and it was 
under him that French and United States fleets were 
driven back when they attempted to enter into rela- 
tions with the Government. Cruelty, that knew no 
mercy, was his second nature, and it was by his orders 
that the third Christian persecution was instituted and 
carried to its bitter end. These occurrences are des- 
cribed in subsequent chapters. The story of the 
King's reign is that of contemporary Korea, no longer 
isolated from the world, the pivot for forty years 
of all the international policy of the Far East. 



CHAPTER XI 

EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 

After the storming of the city of Chin-ju that is 
described in a previous chapter, 1 when it seemed 
probable that the embassies sent to Japan by thej 
Emperor of China might sucjceed in concluding a 
lasting peace, Hideyoshi withdrew from Korea the 
greater part of his army which had served throughout 
the campaign, leaving only the division commanded 
by Konishi to maintain the fortified camps around 
Fusan. Both Konishi and nearly all his men were, 
as before stated, devout Christians. They were the 
first of the invaders to land in Korea ; they were in 
the van and bore the brunt of the fighting throughout 
the whole campaign : they were the troops who had 
suffered most severely from the privations of cold 
and hunger and the heaviest losses in battle, and 
they had therefore merited exceptional consideration 
from Hideyoshi. There was apparently no more 
glory to be won, and the excitement of a hard -fought 
campaign was to be replaced by the monotonous 
routine of garrison duties in time of peace. Konishi's 
division was entitled by all its services and merits 
to be spared from these duties, to be among the fir3t 
who were allowed to return to the homes for which 
all the men were longing. Political considerations 
decreed otherwise. Hideyoshi still wished to keep 
the Christian soldiers at a distance from Japan, and 

1 Vide p. 177. 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 217 

the whole of Konishi's division was therefore detained 
in Korea. As a sop to the sense of injustice and 
ingratitude which this measure provoked among men 
who felt they had deserved better things, they werq 
permitted to have the ministrations of one of thej 
European priests from the Jesuit mission in Japan ; 
and Father Gregorio de Cespedes, together with an 
ordained Japanese priest, therefore proceeded to 
Fusan early in the year 1594, and remained in 
Southern Korea for over a year, not only ministering 
to the spiritual needs of the Japanese soldiers but to 
defeated foes, both on the battlefield and when 
prisoners of war. Hideyoshi was at this time be- 
coming more and more suspicious of the motives 
of Christianity and its European ministers. Kato, 
the enemy of Christianity and rival of Konishi, was 
in Japan and had his ear, and was only too rea;dy 
to warn him of the dangers of encouraging the 
fanatical zeal of the soldier converts, even in Korea, 
and to stimulate his suspicions that the missionary 
propagandism was only a means to the acquisition 
of temporal power. Konishi found his position in 
Korea so insecure that he was obliged in prudence to 
send Cespedes back to Japan, and as the active 
persecution of Christians in Japan commenced soon 
afterwards, he was not able to replace him by 
another priest or priests during the remaining stages 
of the war. 

Father Cespedes was the first European of whom 
we possess authentic information as having landed 
in Korea. Nearly two hundred years were destined 
to elapse before another missionary of his faith 
entered Korea, during the whole of which period the 
country was hermetically closed against foreign inter- 
course. Its shores were occasionally visited by the 
exploring cruisers of European naval powers, but 
none of their officers or crews were ever allowed to 



218 THE STORY OF KOREA 

do more than make a brief landing of a few hours' 
duration on the beach, and that only while they were 
under the protection of their own guns. Throughout 
the whole period the only Europeans of whom we 
have any record that were admitted to the interior 
were a few shipwrecked Dutch sailors, cast away 
on the inhospitable coast while on their voyage from 
Holland to the Dutch Trading Factory at Nagasaki, 
one of whom has left to us a vivid description both 
of his personal experiences while a captive and also 
of the customs, religion, and institutions of the 
country, the truth of which, much though it was 
doubted at the time at which it was first published, 
has since been amply confirmed by more learned 
writers and scientific observers. 

On January 10, 1653, the Dutch ship Sparrow- 
'fiawk sailed from Texel for Nagasaki. On 
June 1st she arrived at Batavia, where she re- 
mained for fourteen days, and then sailed for Taiwan 
(Formosa), where she arrived on July 16th, 
and remained for another fortnight. On the 30th 
she started on the last stage of her long voyage. The 
late summer is the worst period of the year in the 
Southern China seas — that at which the dreaded 
typhoons may be expected to appear in their utmost 
violence — and it was the ill-fortune of the Sparrow- 
hawk to find them at their very worst from the day 
on which she sailed from Taiwan. She met with 
a continued succession of violent gales, was driven 
out of her course, and after having been buffeted by 
waves and winds for a fortnight, at last found herself, 
with her masts gone, helpless on a lee shore, on 
August 1 6th. The master commended the crew 
to their prayers, all hope being gone. The ship 
soon struck, and in the heavy sea at once went to 
pieces, and out of her total complement of sixty-six 
men, only thirty-six succeeded in reaching the shore, 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 219 

most of them more or less dangerously hurt. Among 
the survivors was Hendrick Hamel, the supercargo, 
to whom we owe the record of their sufferings and 
long exile. 

It was on the island of Quelpart that the wreck 
took place. The survivors were kindly treated by 
the natives, though at first a great iron chain with 
a bell was put round the neck of each^ and the 
wreckage was all plundered, the timbers being burnt 
for the sake of the iron nails which fastened them 
together. The plunderers were, however, punished 
by the Governor, each receiving thirty or forty strokes 
on the soles of the feet with a cudgel, six feet long 
and as thick as a man's arm, the beating being so 
severe that the toes dropped off some of the feet ; 
and the shipwrecked sailors were fed and lodged, 
such care being taken of the sick that they werle 
" better treated by that idolater than they should 
have been among Christians." On October 29th, 
when they had been on the island for two 
and a half months, they were one day summoned 
to the Governor's office, where they found a man 
with a great red beard, who proved to be a fellow- 
countryman of their own. He had been for twenty- 
seven years an exile in Korea. Like themselves, 
he had sailed from Holland in one of the Dutch 
Company's ships for Nagasaki, and when at the very 
end of his long voyage, when his ship was off the 
Korean coast, he and some others had landed to 
obtain water, and three of them were taken prisoners 
by the natives. Their ship sailed away, leaving them 
to their fate ; and though Nagasaki and the Dutch 
factory were distant only a few days' sail ; though 
every year seven or eight Dutch ships arrived there 
any one of which might easily have called off Fusan 
either on her homeward or outward voyage ; though 
communications were regularly interchanged between 



220 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the Japanese and Koreans at Tsushima and Fusan, 
and the officials of the Dutch factory knew that a 
Korean embassy came to Yedo (Tokio) every year 
with unfailing punctuality, no attempt seems ever 
to have been made by their countrymen to use these 
means as to inquiring after their fate. Two of the 
castaways served as soldiers with the Korean army in 
the Manchu War in 1635 I an d were killed in battle. 
The survivor, whose name was John W*etteree, was 
afterwards kept in an honourable captivity at Seoul, 
and it was he who now appeared to interrogate his 
shipwrecked countrymen, sent specially for that 
purpose from the Court at Seoul, to which the presence 
of the foreigners on Korean soil had been duly re- 
ported by the officials at Quelpart. He had almost 
completely forgotten his own language, of which he 
had not the opportunity of using a single word in 
the eighteen years which had passed since the death 
of his fellow-captives. At first it was difficult to 
understand him, and it was not until after a month's 
association with the sailors that he recovered enough 
of the language to be able to converse with any 
fluency. He was now fifty-nine years of age, and 
had been in hopeless exile for twenty -seven years. 
It was the custom of the country, he told them, 
to detain all strangers found within its limits, and, 
though they would be provided with food and cloth- 
ing, " they must never expect to leave it unless they 
got wings to fly." 

They were all detained in the island till May of 
the following year. During their stay a change of 
Governors took place, much to the detriment of the 
unhappy captives, for they were worse fed and more 
strictly watched, and while their sufferings became 
greater the prospect of being brought, as they had 
been promised, to the capital of the country seemed 

1 Vide p. 202. 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 221 

to become more remote. In their impatience six 
of them made a desperate attempt to escape in a 
small boat without either provisions or water, hoping 
to reach Japan, but they had scarcely started when 
they were caught and brought back. They were then 
chained to a great log, and each received twenty-five 
strokes " on the bare buttocks from a cudgel a fathom 
long, four fingers broad, and an inch thick, being 
flat on the side that strikes and round on the other. 
These strokes were so unmercifully laid on that 
the sufferers were forced to keep their beds for a 
month, and though the rest were unbound yet 
they were confined and strictly guarded day and 
night." After that lesson there were no More attempts 
to escape. 

At last in May orders came to carry them to the 
Court. The distance from Quelpart to the mainland 
is only thirty-five miles, yet the crossing was full 
of peril and discomfort. On the first attempt after 
struggling with contrary winds, they were obliged 
to put back, but the second attempt was successful, 
though they were twenty-four hours in the boats, 
and all were scattered and landed at different places. 
During the passage their feet were fettered and one 
hand was made fast to a block to prevent their 
attempting to escape, which otherwise they might 
easily have done, for all the soldiers guarding them 
were seasick. On their way from their landing- 
place to the capital one of their number died, but 
the rest performed the long journey without mishap, 
and as soon as they arrived they were brought before 
the King, " They humbly beseeched his Majesty to 
send them to Japan, so that they might one ^day 
return thence to their homes," but it was only ,to 
find that all that Wetteree had told them 1 was con- 
firmed. " It was not the custom' of Korea to suffer 
strangers to depart." They were, in fact, at once 



222 THE STORY OF KOREA 

adopted as Korean subjects, dressed as Koreans, en- 
rolled among the King's life-guards, and armed, and 
thenceforward for a time their lives were those of 
ordinary privates in the ranks, with the same drills 
and marchings as the Korean soldier. In one respect 
they had similar experiences to their countrymen of 
high rank in Japan. Kaempfer, the Dutch historian 
of Japan, tells of how when the annual mission of 
the factory took place to the Court of the Shogun 
at Yedo the Governor of the factory and its high 
officers, Kaempfer himself, the learned physician and 
philosopher, included, were forced to dance, sing, 
make love, kiss, and exhibit numerous other buffoon- 
eries for the amusement of the Shogun's courtiers, 
especially the ladies of the Court. What the grave 
and learned officials of high rank had to do at Yedo 
the poor castaways had to do at Seoul. They wene 
ordered to sing, dance, and leap, to exercise and 
shoot after the Dutch manner. " Above all, the wives 
and children of the nobles were eager to view them, 
because the common people of Quelpart had spread 
a report that they were a monstrous race, and when 
they drank were obliged to tuck up their noses 
behind their ears. But they were amazed to see 
them better shaped than their own countrymen, and 
above all they admired the fairness of their com- 
plexion.' J 

We cannot follow the poor Dutchmen through all 
the details of their long captivity. They were full of 
suffering, want, and hard, unrequited labour, and 
on more than one occasion all the captives were 
threatened with death. They had some hopes of 
making their condition known through the Chinese 
ambassador, who came each year from Peking to 
receive the homage of the King. They were for- 
bidden to attempt to communicate with him, and 
confined within doors during his stay at Seoul so 







Q 

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w 
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EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 223 

that they should not be seen by him ; but on one 
occasion, in March, 1655, two of them hid outside 
the city on the day on which the ambassador set 
out on his return journey, and when he appeared at 
the head of his troops they laid hold of his horse's 
reins with one hand and with the other turned aside 
their Korean habit to let him see they were clad after 
the Dutch manner underneath. The only result was 
that the two were put in prison and never seen or 
heard of again by their countrymen, and the rest 
were subsequently banished from the capital to the 
province of " Thillado " (Cholla). 

Their treatment in their new quarters varied under 
the different Governors of the province. Sometimes 
it was kind : at others they were put to the roughest 
manual labour, carrying firewood from the moun- 
tains and weeding grass, insufficiently fed and still 
more insufficiently clothed, so that they suffered keenly 
from the winter cold. Throughout all the year 1662 
there was a great famine. Acorns, pineapples, and 
other wild fruits were the only food of the people, 
abundance of whom died of want. The Dutchmen, 
reduced by death to twenty-two in number, were 
then distributed in different towns, it being impossible 
to support them all in one. Hamel and four com- 
panions were sent to a town on the south-east coast. 
Here they remained five years, all the time giving 
their best thoughts, whether well or ill treated, to 
planning the means of escape to Japan. At last they 
got their chance. Desperate under the increased 
tyranny of a new Governor, they obtained, through 
the assistance of a Korean whom they had been able 
to befriend, a boat, on the pretence that they wanted 
to go to the neighbouring isles to buy cotton ; three 
of their comrades from another district were able to 
join them, and on September 4, 1667, as the moon 
in its first quarter was setting, they crept along the 



224 THE STORY OF KOREA 

city wall, unperceived by anybody, carrying with them 
their scanty accumulation of provisions, rice, pots 
of water, and a frying-pan. They embarked and 
crept out of the harbour without discovery, and, with- 
out a compass, scantily provisioned, knowing only 
that Japan lay somewhere to the east, they comtaitted 
themselves in a frail open boat to the seas of whose 
storms they had had such bitter experience prior to 
their shipwreck almost at the same season of the year, 
of whose dangers they must have learned much more 
during their captivity. Fortune favoured them this 
time. After having been at sea for eight days they 
succeeded in reaching the Goto Islands, where they 
were taken in charge by the Japanese and brought to 
Nagasaki. There they found their own country- 
men and the ships of the Company in whose service 
they had originally sailed. Passages were provided 
for them in the first ship to leave for home, and on 
July 20, 1668, they reached Amsterdam 1 — all Enoch 
Ardens who had been mourned as dead for fifteen 
years. > 1 ! 

Hamel does not tell in his narrative whether at 
the time of his escape Wetteree was still alive. He 
knew, however, that thirteen survivors of the ship- 
wrecked crew of the Sparrowhawk were still under- 
going all the miseries of an iron captivity and hope- 
less exile, miseries so great that to escape from them 
he and his fellows had not hesitated to imperil their 
lives in an open boat, knowing that if their attempt 
failed a cruel punishment and more rigid captivity 
awaited them, and no doubt he told all this to the! 
officials of the Dutch factory. They had only to 
ask and obtain the intervention of the Japanese, if 
for nothing else to make inquiries ; but it is another 
instance of the depths of degradation to which the 
early Dutch traders with Japan allowed themselves 
to fall in their cupidity for gain, that they left their, 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 225 

countrymen, servants of their own Company, ship- 
wrecked and castaway while in the discharge of their 
duty, to their fate rather than risk offending or 
troubling the Japanese by making a single repre- 
sentation on their behalf. Nothing was ever heard 
of them again, nothing is told of them in Korean 
history ; and how or when they died, whether they 
had to pay the penalty of their comrades' escape by 
torture and execution or, as Wetteree, lingered out 
hopeless lives in captivity, is entirely unknown. Many 
other Europeans of whom we now know nothing may 
have met with the same fate. One European ship 
out of every three that in those days sailed to the 
Eastern seas was never heard of again after leaving 
her last port of departure, and it is not unreason- 
able to suppose that the Sparrowhawk was not 
the only one that was cast away on the storm- 
beaten and dangerous coasts of Eastern or Southern 
Korea. 

In the year 1797, Captain Broughton, in his voyage 
of discovery in H.M.S. Providence ; cruised along 
the east coast of Korea, and as a metaento of his 
visit gave his name to the great bay in the south of 
the province of Ham Gyong, which it still bears on 
European maps and charts. Nineteen years later, 
H.M. ships Lyra and Alceste, which had just con- 
veyed Lord Amherst's Mission to Peking, visited the 
south-west coast, and Captain Basil Hall, the com- 
mander of the Lyra, has left a description to us 
of what he saw during his stay of eleven days on 
the coast and in the group of islands off it, to which 
he gave the name " Sir James Hall Islands," in 
memory of his father, the President of the Edinburgh 
Geographical Society. Neither of the great navi- 
gators made any endeavour to penetrate into the 
country, and their principal interest in it was purely 
professional, to delineate its coast line for the benefit 

15 



226 THE STORY OF KOREA 

of sailors who might follow them. 1 In 1835 the first 
French missionary succeeded in crossing the northern 
frontiers and making his way to Seoul, but his story 
and that of his colleagues belongs to another chapter. 
Ten years later Captain Belcher in H.M.S. Sama- 
rang surveyed the coasts of Quelpart and the harbour 
of Port Hamilton, and early in 1846 a French frigate 
appeared at the entrance of the River Han and 
delivered to the local officials a letter demanding 
from the Government an explanation of the execution 
of the three missionaries, seven years before. 2 The 
letter contained an intimation that other ships would 
come later to receive the reply, and in compliance 
with it, two frigates, la Gloire and la Victorieuse, 
arrived off the coast in August of the same year. 
Their visit was unfortunate. Both grounded on un- 
charted shoals at high-water, and when the tide fell, 
rapidly and deeply as it always does on the wjest 
coast, both were left high and dry on the rocks, and 
both became total wrecks. The crews were landed 
on an island near at hand, and one of the lifeboats 
was sent to Shanghai to convey tidings of their mis- 
fortune and to bring a ship to their relief. Before 
it came, however, all the shipwrecked men were taken 

1 In the year 1875, while Korea still rigidly maintained her hermit- 
like seclusion, the present writer visited the coasts in an English 
man-of-war. Captain Hall's description of his experience might be 
applied verbatim to those of the writer on that occasion. The 
Koreans were civil and polite, but refused to permit any advance 
inland from the beach, to sell anything — even beef — or to give 
admission to the towns or villages, and it was intimated that huge 
piles of stones — the Koreans are the most expert stone throwers in 
the world — were ready to welcome any one who attempted to 
approach either. On the other hand, they betrayed the most 
intense curiosity themselves, visited every part of the ship, and, it 
must be added, stole freely, several of their thefts, which were not 
discovered at the time, proving very inconvenient, 

55 Vide p. 271, 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 227 

away by an English steamer which happened to pass 
on her voyage from Newchwang. While they were 
on the island they were well treated by the inhabit- 
ants, and an official who came from the capital 
not only permitted provisions to be sold to them 
but offered in the name of his Government to 
provide boats for their safe conveyance to China. 
They were, however, rigidly secluded, their camp 
on the island watched all night by Government 
boats with lanterns, no intercourse beyond what 
was absolutely necessary was permitted with the 
natives, and, although the official knew the object with 
which the two frigates had come to Korea, he neither 
brought nor mentioned the reply to the first letter. 
The visit of the frigates, notwithstanding its un- 
fortunate determination, aroused the Korean Court 
to the danger to the national seclusion which was 
provoked by their failure to reply to the original 
letter from the French Government, and to prevent 
further visits from the foreign barbarians a reply 
was sent by Peking after the removal of the ship- 
wrecked sailors. As the reply is an interesting illus- 
tration of Oriental argument and diplomacy, it is, 
notwithstanding its length, worth quoting in full, as 
it is given by Dallet in a translation from the version 
that was published in Korea under a royal proclama- 
tion that it should be made known to all the kingdom : 

" Last year, the inhabitants of one of our Islands delivered to us a 
letter brought to them, they said, by foreign ships. We were much 
astonished by this news and, on opening the letter, we saw that it 
was addressed to our Ministers by a Chief of your Kingdom and that 
its contents were as follows : 

" * You have put to death three worthy men from our country, 
Imbert, Maubant and Chastan. 1 We desire to ask you why you killed 
them. You will perhaps say that Korean law forbids foreigners to 

1 Vide p. 271. 



228 THE STORY OF KOREA 

enter the kingdom, and that the men were condemned for having 
disobeyed this law. But if Chinese, Japanese or Manchurians entered 
Korea, you would not dare to kill them but would have them sent 
back to their own country. Why then did you not treat these men 
as you would have treated Chinese, Japanese or Manchurians ? Had 
they been guilty of homicide, arson or other crimes of like kind, you 
would have been justified in punishing them and we should have had 
nothing to say against it. But as they were innocent and you 
condemned them unjustly, you have deeply insulted the Kingdom of 
France/ 

" To this letter we reply clearly : In the year Kei-hai, some 
foreigners were arrested in Korea. We do not know at what period 
they introduced themselves into our country. They were dressed 
like Koreans and spoke our language ; they travelled at night and 
slept during the day ; they covered [veiled] their faces ; they were 
secretive and associated with rebels, scoundrels and ungodly people. 
Are these the men mentioned in the letter of your Chief ? Under 
examination in the Court of Justice they did not say that they were 
Frenchmen, and even if they had said so, it would have been the 
first time for us to have heard of your country, and would have been 
no reason for us not to apply our law which forbids people to enter 
clandestinely into ours. Besides their conduct in changing their 
names and clothing proved to us their ill-will and rendered it im- 
possible to compare them to persons shipwrecked by accident on 
our coast. 

" Our kingdom is surrounded by seas and foreigners are often ship- 
wrecked on our coasts ; in that case, we come to their aid, we give 
them food and, if possible, send them back to their own country. 
Such is the law of our country. If your compatriots had been ship- 
wrecked people what reason is there why we should have treated 
them otherwise than we would have done the Chinese, Manchurians 
or Japanese ? You say further that these Frenchmen were killed with- 
out legal cause and that in doing this, we have deeply insulted you. 
These words much astonish us. We do not know how far Korea is 
from France, and we have no communications with you. What 
motive should we have had to insult you ? Think what you would 
do yourselves if some Korean came secretly and in disguise into 
your country to do harm. Would you leave him in peace ? If 
Chinese, Japanese or Manchurians were to act as your countrymen 
have done we should punish them according to our law. Formerly 
we condemned a Chinaman to capital punishment for entering the 
country in secret and in disguise. The Chinese Government did 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 229 

not complain of this because it knew our laws. Even if we had 
known that the men we put to death were French, we should not 
have been able to spare them, as their actions were more criminal 
than homicide or arson ; much more were we, when ignorant of 
their nationality, obliged to sentence them to the last penalty. The 
thing is quite clear and requires no further explanation. 

" We know that you intend coming this year to request an answer 
to your letter, but as it was delivered to us without the necessary 
formalities, there is no obligation on us to send any reply to it. It 
is not the affair of a local governor. Our kingdom is subordinate 
to the Chinese Government and our foreign affairs must be referred 
to the Emperor. 

" Report this to your chief and do not be surprised that, in order 
to explain to you the true state of affairs, we have been obliged to 
speak to you as we have done." 1 

The logic of the answer is irresistible, but logic 
does not atone in the eyes of a great nation for the 
murder of its subjects, and France would no doubt 
have followed the matter farther had it not been 
for her own internal affairs. It is a strange fact 
that revolutions in France have always seemed to 
occur just at periods when the protection or advance- 
ment of the interests of the Catholic Church in the 
Far East required active measures on the part of her 
Government or the authorities of the Church. The 
revolution of 1798 caused the Church in China and 
Korea to be uncared for and neglected for many 
years. In the case just told the Korean letter had 
hardly reached Paris when the revolution of 1848 
occurred and Korea was utterly forgotten. In 1870, 
the massacre at Tientsin was at once followed by 
the downfall of Napoleon, and the Far East had 
perforce once more to be entirely disregarded. 
Nothing was done after the rescue by English ships 
of the crews of the Gloire and Vtctorieuse. Korea 
was told by the French representative in China that 
she would expose herself to serious dangers if in 

1 Dallet, " Histoire de TEglise de Coree," vol. ii. p. 33Q. 



230 THE STORY OF KOREA 

future she failed to send a Frenchman arrested in 
Korea to Peking, but she could laugh at the threat. 
The French did not even send a ship to collect the 
salvage from the wrecks of the two frigates, and 
twenty years lapsed before their men-of-war were 
seen again from the Korean shores. Then they made 
a serious effort, not only to obtain satisfaction for 
more murdered priests but to break down the barriers 
of Korean civilisation. 

In the year 1866, the year in which the effort 
just alluded to was made by the French, two attempts 
were made to enter Korea by private adventurers. 
Twice in that year, prior to the French, a German 
named Oppert, a trader who had resided for some 
years at Shanghai, endeavoured to ascend the River 
Han, his ostensible object being, of course, trade, 
but on both occasions he found it advisable to with- 
draw without having achieved anything beyond a 
superficial survey of the river approaches. In the 
same year a United States schooner was wrecked 
on the coast pf Hoang-Hai. The crew were saved ,and 
kindly treated by the local authorities, once the latter 
had assured themselves that they were not dealing 
with missionaries who had deliberately adopted this 
violent means of gaining an entry to their country. 
They were finally conducted to the frontier town of 
Aichiu, whence they reached the Treaty Port of New- 
chwang in North China. While the shipwrecked men 
were still in Korea, another United States schooner', 
the General Sherman, left Chefoo, avowedly for the 
same purpose as that of Oppert, to endeavour to sell 
her cargo to the Koreans. It was afterwards ascer- 
tained that she had entered the River Tatong almiost 
at the same time as Oppert entered the Han, but 
while the latter returned in safety none of the 
passengers or crew of the General Sherman were 
ever seen again by European eyes. In the following 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 231 

year (1867) Oppert became the leader of a more 
notorious expedition. In association with an 
American citizen named Jenkins, he succeeded in 
chartering two steamers, one of a thousand tons, 
and therefore of considerable size for those days, 
and the other a tug of small size and shallow draft 
suitable for river work. Both were manned by a 
large crew of Manila and Chinese sailors, both ships 
and sailors being fully armed. Along with them 
went a French priest who was said to have been one 
of the missionaries who had lived in and escaped 
from the persecution in Korea, and who now went 
as interpreter and guide. 

The avowed object of the expedition, as un- 
blushingly acknowledged afterwards in a book written 
by its leader, was that of sacrilege and robbery, but 
evil was to be committed only that good might come 
out of it. One of the royal tombs was to be opened 
and certain relics taken from it, to which the Regent 
of Korea at the time, the Tai Won Kun, attached 
great value, believing: that the safety and the welfare 
of his own house were indissolubly associated with 
their preservation. If, therefore, possession of them 
could be obtained, they might be used as a 
fulcrum to extort from! the proud and conservative 
Regent, who bitterly hated all Europeans both then 
and afterwards, who was the instigator of the whole- 
sale persecution of Christians that was then at its 
height, concessions which would secure the safety 
of Christians and open the way to trade with Europe. 
The German adventureir, a Hamburg Jew, of no social 
standing among the European communities in the 
East, constituted himself an ambassador to that end 
and actually drafted a treaty which he proposed to 
force upon the Tai Won Kun. This excuse may have 
been sufficient to deceive and enlist the services of 
the French priest, who would have hesitated at 



232 THE STORY OF KOREA 

nothing that might secure the wellbeing of his be- 
loved converts in Korea ; but there is no doubt that 
the object of Oppert and his American co-adventurer 
was very different. 

Korea was always known to be rich in gold ; and 
vague traditions, percolating through the annual 
Korean tribute-bearing embassies to Peking, that 
Korean kings were buried in coffers of solid gold, 
had become current in Shanghai and other European 
trading settlements on the China coast. It was with 
the deliberate purpose of rifling their tombs that 
Oppert's buccaneering expedition set out, and, while 
the benefit of the doubt must be given to the owners 
and crew of the General Sherman, whose mouths 
were closed by death before they had the opportunity 
of speaking in their own defence, there is only too 
much reason to believe that their purpose was not 
widely different. The fate of the General Sherman 
may be told here, as it was afterwards ascertained 
from the information of the Koreans themselves. She 
succeeding in ascending the river when it was flooded 
by summer rains, as far as Phyong An, but while 
there the falling of the river caused her to take the 
ground and fall on her side. While in this helpless 
position an altercation occurred between some of her 
crew and the natives, and the latter, not acting at the 
suggestion or under the leadership of the officials 
but under the spur of their own indignation at the 
foreigners ' conduct, attacked the ship in a huge mob, 
and though suffering severe loss, destroyed both the 
ship and crew, some of the crew being killed, others 
drowned as they leaped into the river from the burn- 
ing ship, and some who were taken alive executed. 

Oppert was more fortunate. He was a man of 
considerable ability, literary as well as mercantile ; 
and many years afterwards, when the Japanese had 
broken the barriers of Korea's exclusiveness and 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 233 

European attention was being directed to it as a 
new field for trade and politics, he published a work 
in which he described his own voyages to Korea, 
and gave interesting particulars, which were then 
almost wholly novel, of what he had seen. He 
ascended, not the River Tatong as did the General 
Sherman but the Han, leading direct to the capital, 
and a strong party fully armed having been landed, 
an attempt was made to excavate what was believed 
to be a royal tomb. But when the earth had been 
cleared away, with much labour, heavy stone flags 
were found beneath which the plunderers were un- 
able to move with the tools they had with them, and 
they had to return to their ship with their object 
unfulfilled. On their way back they were attacked by 
a large native crowd but were strong enough with 
their modern firearms, opposed to gingalls and stones, 
to keep their assailants at a distance and to make their 
way to their boats with insignificant loss to them- 
selves. The country being now roused against them, 
it was hopeless to pursue their original object, and 
the " fleet " returned to Shanghai, where its piratical 
nature soon leaked out. 

The American who had financed and engineered the 
expedition was arrested and brought to trial before 
the United States Consular Court, but there was not 
sufficient evidence to justify a conviction for any 
offence known to the common law of the United 
States ; and the United States had not at its disposal 
the machinery of Orders in Council which enabled 
Great Britain to create offences which, though un- 
known to the common or statute law of the Empire, 
were rendered necessary by the peculiar conditions of 
our extra-territorial jurisdiction in the Far East. The 
accused therefore escaped all punishment. The case 
of the German, Oppiert, was even, a more striking illus- 
tration of the evils of extra-territoriality when Powers 



234 THE STORY OF KOREA 

who enjoy its privileges fail to provide the necessary 
machinery for fulfilling the moral obligations which 
it imposes on them. Prussia had then neither 
political nor commercial interests in the Far East, 
and the prospect that it should ever have either 
seemed as remote as it does at the present that the 
German Empire may one day wrest from England the 
chain of Imperial colonies that guard the ocean 
highway to the East. Prussia was therefore repre- 
sented only by merchant consuls, vested with no 
higher criminal jurisdiction than enabled them to 
deal with a drunken seaman. They had not the 
legal authority, and, if they had had the legal 
authority, they had neither the theoretical nor 
practical knowledge that would have enabled them 
to deal with such a case as that of Oppert, and the 
nearest court in which any charge could be preferred 
against him was in Prussia. He therefore escaped 
scot-free, and became lost to public notice until the 
publication of his book, fourteen years afterwards. 
The evil that he did long survived his departure from 
China. When the Japanese made their first treaty 
with Korea, ten years after Oppert's expedition, the 
memory of his attempted outrage on the grave of one 
of their kings was still strong enough to form a 
considerable factor for the foundation of the hatred 
against Europeans which was universal among all 
classes. 

We have told this story of Oppert's attempted 
piracy as it is of some interest as illustrating what 
was possible in those days in the China Seas, when 
acts that more than savoured of piracy, both on land 
and sea, were not wholly unknown even on the part 
of British subjects. Insignificant as the case may 
appear on first sight, the knowledge of what had 
happened quickly spread through all Korea, and had 
the result of intensifying the already existing hatred 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 235 

of Europeans and the belief that all were only robbers 
to be kept out of the country at any cost. Thie 
General Sherman affair had more important results, 
but before describing them we have to relate the story 
of the French attempt to make the names of Europe 
and Christianity respected in Seoul. 

The protection of Roman Catholics throughout the 
whole of the so-called uncivilised world was one of 
the principles of the foreign policy of Napoleon III. 
It was when he was at the height of his power and 
influence that the intelligence of the Christian perse- 
cution of 1866 and the massacre of the bishop and 
the missionaries in Korea l reached Peking, and his 
diplomatic representative at the Chinese capital 
thought he would be only anticipating his master's 
instructions by taking immediate steps for avenging 
an outrage on priests who were entitled to his good 
offices, not only as Roman Catholics but as French 
citizens. Accordingly, after having delivered an ulti- 
matum to the Chinese Government, as Korea's 
suzerain, the language of which, in its bombastic 
arrogance, was quite worthy of his Imperial master, 
he called upon the French admiral on the China 
Station to vindicate the honour of France. In 
October, 1866, the fleet, numbering seven ships of 
war of varying calibre, proceeded to the entrance 
of the River Han. As another curious illustration 
of the conditions of European intercourse with the 
East in these days, it may be mentioned that both 
Great Britain and France maintained garrisons of 
very substantial strength of their own troops at Yoko- 
hama. The object of these garrisons was to secure 
for European residents the protection in Japan from 
Japanese rebels in arms against their own Govern- 
ment which that Government was not able to guarantee 
itself. The object was justified by the conditions 

1 Vide p. 283. 



236 THE STORY OF KOREA 

of Japan at the time, but it should have been strictly 
observed, and if a temporary withdrawal of the troops 
could be made with safety, equally so could a per- 
manent one. The French troops were now with- 
drawn from Yokohama and embarked on the fleet 
that was to invade Korea. Japan was thus made a 
basis from 1 which an attack was delivered on a 
friendly power, with which she had every reason to 
be in sympathy, and the whole policy of keeping 
French soldiers in Yokohama stultified. 

The island of Kang Wha, or " the Flower of the 
river " — so called from its fertility and the beauty of its 
situation — lies at the mouth of the River Han, about 
forty -five miles from the capital. It has always been 
one of the fortified outposts of the capital, and it was 
frequently the refuge of the Korean kings when 
domestic trouble or foreign invasion forced them to 
forsake their capital. In the town which is on the 
island duplicates of the national archives at Seoul 
are carefully preserved, and there were also in it 
large magazines of such war material as the Koreans 
possessed and a reserve of treasure. More interesting 
than the war material and treasure was the royal 
library. 

" The library was very rich. Two or three thousand books printed 
in Chinese with numerous drawings, on good paper all well labelled, 
the greater number very bulky, bound with badges of copper on 
covers of silk green or crimson, amongst them the ancient history 
of Korea in sixty volumes. What was most curious, was a book 
formed of Marble Tablets, folding like the panels of a screen on 
hinges of gilded copper, each tablet protected by a pad of scarlet 
silk. The whole was placed in a pretty copper box, which was in 
its turn encased in a wooden box painted red with scrolls of gilded 
copper. When opened these tablets formed a book of about a dozen 
pages. They contained, some say, the moral law of the country, 
according to others, whose opinions are more likely to be correct, 
the favours accorded to the Kings of Korea by the Emperor of 
China. The Koreans valued it highly. In another case, was the 



KARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 237 

perfectly sculptured marble tortoise, under the pedestal of which 
was the royal seal, the seal which was so formidable that the simple- 
minded Koreans could neither touch or even see it, and the 
possession of which has many times sufficed to transfer royal 
authority and to end revolutions. This seal was new, and seemed 
never to have been used." s 

The French landed in the island, attacked the 
town, and undeterred by a heavy fire from jingals, 
broke through the gates with hatchets and quickly 
found themselves in full possession of it. Reinforce- 
ments were hastily sent from Seoul to garrison 
another fortress in the island, and when the French 
attacked this a few days after their first triumph they 
met with so warm a reception that they were obliged 
to retreat in disorder with considerable loss, followed 
to their boats with triumphant shouts from the 
Koreans. Before embarking, they set fire to the 
city of Kang Wha, and it was burned from end to 
end. This was the end of the expedition. The 
French came to the conclusion that a few hundred 
soldiers and sailors, landed where they could not be 
protected by the guns of their fleet, were insufficient 
to conquer a nation, even one so backward in military- 
equipment and science as were the Koreans, and re- 
turned to China to await orders or reinforcement 
from home. When the orders came they brought a 
disapproval of the action of the minister, and as 
European affairs soon afterwards gave the Emperor 
enough to occupy both his thoughts and his soldiers, 
nothing was ever heard of further French operations 
against Korea. 

Another power took up the gauntlet which Korea, 
in adhering to her national policy of rigid isolation, 
flung in the face of Western nations. The United 
States was the Power which, by firm diplomacy 
backed by a strong fleet, compelled Japan to depart 
1 Dallet, " Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree," vol. ii. p. 579. 



238 THE STORY OF KOREA 

from the same policy that Korea still followed, and 
her statesmen thought they might be equally success- 
ful in Korea. The disappearance of the General 
Sherman furnished the excuse. Nothing definite was 
known as to her fate or that of her crew — who it is 
to be remembered were supposed to have gone to 
Korea on a peaceful trading adventure — and inquiry 
had to be made in regard to it. Measures were also 
to be taken which would ensure the safety of American 
sailors who might subsequently be shipwrecked on 
Korean coasts, and the coast and rivers surveyed 
for the use of shipping that approached Korean waters. 
Incidentally to these objects a treaty of commerce 
might also be concluded. The United States fleet was 
stronger than that of the French, and was commanded 
by one of the ablest and most experienced admirals 
in their navy. Diplomacy was represented by the 
minister at Peking, who accompanied the fleet, all 
whose qualities were the antithesis of those of the 
bombastic Napoleonic Frenchman, and who had the 
full confidence and was armed with the explicit in- 
structions of his Government. All preparations 
having been made, the fleet sailed from Nagasaki on 
May 1 6, 1 87 1, and a few days later was off the mouth 
of the Han. Some days were passed there waiting 
for replies to the letters which were sent to the 
capital, and then, none having been received, boats 
were sent out to survey the river. When they had 
proceeded a little distance up it and were opposite 
the island of Kang Wha, heavy fire was opened on 
them from all the forts on the island, all repaired and 
strengthened since the French escapade of five years 
previously. But the Korean guns were trained after 
the old Chinese fashion, to sweep only one particular 
spot, and as the boats took a course which brought 
them outside this spot few of them were struck, while 
such was the quality of Korean powder and shot that 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 239 

the few which were struck were uninjured. The 
fire was returned with all the vigour that could be 
given to it by open launches, armed with fourteen - 
pounder howitzers, and a couple of gun -boats with 
eight -inch rifled guns, and this was quite sufficient 
to silence the forts for the time. The flotilla then 
returned to its base with the fleet, its casualties, after 
a hot engagement, being limited to two men slightly 
wounded. Ten days more passed. Then some 
officials came bearing a lietter, the translation of which 
was as follows : 

" In the year 1868, a man of your nation whose name was Febiger, 
came here, and communicated, and went away. Why cannot you 
do the same ? In the year 1866, a people called the French came 
here, and we refer you to them for what happened. This people 
and kingdom have lived in the enjoyment of their own civilisation 
four thousand years, and we want no other. We trouble no other 
nations. Why should they trouble us ? Our country is in the 
furthest east, yours in the furthest west. For what purpose do you 
come so many thousand miles across the sea? Is it to enquire about 
the vessel destroyed [the General Sherman] ? Her men committed 
piracy and murder and they were punished with death. Do you 
want our land? That cannot be. Do you want intercourse with 
us? That cannot be/' 1 

The visitors were of too low rank to be personally 
received by either the minister or admiral. They 
gave no hope of any of higher degree coming, of any 
apology for the firing on the boats, and no further 
communication was received from the capital. An 
advance in force was therefore decided upon. 
Another and a much larger flotilla was sent up the 
river, a landing effected, and the forts on the island 
captured and destroyed after two days' desultory 
fighting, during which three Americans were killed 

1 Japan Mail, 1871. Febiger was the commander of the United 
States man-of-war Shenandoah, which made a preliminary survey of 
the entrance of the Han. 



240 THE STORY OF KOREA 

and hundreds of the Koreans mowed down by the 
Remington rifles and shell and shrapnel fire of the 
Americans. Then the honour of the flag having 
been vindicated, and the hopelessness recognised of a 
treaty of friendship with the Koreans after such pre- 
liminaries to peaceful negotiation, the fleet sailed 
away as the Frenchmen had done before them. 

The results of the two expeditions within a few 
years of each other were not only fruitless as far 
as the promotion of Western interests was concerned, 
but were, on the contrary, mischievous in the extreme. 
Just as the Japanese claimed a victory over the British 
fleet when it withdrew from Kagoshima, 1 so now did 
the Koreans claim to have victoriously repulsed the 
French and United States fleets when they threatened 
their shores ; and their victory served to confirm the 
worst and most bigoted prejudices, not only of the 
autocratic Regent but of the entire official hierarchy, 
their resolution to maintain the national isolation, and 
their confidence in their own invincibility. The object 
of the French expedition was to avenge murdered 
Catholics and secure immunity for them in the future. 
When the expedition was driven away, as the Koreans 
believed it to have been, the persecution of native 
Christians was renewed with redoubled vigour and 
cruelty, and the executioner and the torturer became 
busy in every district in which the presence of a 
Christian was suspected. There are ;not wanting some 
who even ascribe the Tientsin massacre of 1870 to 
the loss of French prestige consequent on the Korean 
fiasco. The United States had full warning from the 
experience of the French of what they had reason to 
expect. Their motives in the expedition were un- 
doubtedly humane and Christian ; but they knew the 
expedition might not be entirely a pacific one, and 
if force was to be used it should have been strong 
1 Vide u The Story of Old Japan/' 



EARLY EUROPEAN RELATIONS 241 

enough to have been invincible, and it should have 
been carried out to the last degree. As it was, the 
only thing achieved by it was the destruction of life 
and property, while the Koreans, convinced by both 
expeditions of the wanton aggressiveness pf 
Europeans as well as of their incapacity and 
cowardice, extended their contempt to the Japanese 
who had just entered on their first essay in the 
acquisition of European civilisation, and expressed 
that contempt in insulting letters which nearly 
brought war between them and Japan, and which un- 
doubtedly would have brought war had it not been 
for Japan's own internal complications at the time. 
As it was Korea was left alone both by Europeans 
and Japanese for five years more, and then Japan 
was strong enough and determined enough to 
accomplish what the United States had so vainly 
essayed. 



16 



CHAPTER XII 

CHRISTIANITY TO THE FIRST PERSECUTION 

The first Christian missionary landed in Japan in the 
year 1549, and a campaign of propagandism then 
began which rivalled in its success the greatest 
triumphs of the Apostles. Fifty years afterwards 
the toleration which the Japanese at first extended 
to the new doctrine was changed into merciless perse- 
cution, and that, in its turn, equally rivalled the 
cruelty with which Nero pursued the Christians of 
Rome. It also rivalled the Roman persecution in the 
heroic fortitude of countless martyrs, in the torture, 
in all the most hideous forms that human ingenuity 
in its most fiendish mood could devise, which they 
suffered rather than forsake their faith. 

Persecution in its most active form in Japan lasted 
for forty years, at the end of which Christianity 
was exterminated, not to appear again until, under 
treaties with European Powers, missionaries acquired 
the legal right to propagate their faith. The early 
pioneers of the faith confined their efforts to Japan. 
One of them, it has been told, paid a brief visit to 
Korea, not as an apostle to its people but as a 
chaplain to the soldiers who were slaughtering and 
plundering them, and while there his ministrations 
were limited to the soldiers who had already been con- 
verted in Japan. Among the natives other than those 
who were made prisoners of war he did nothing, 
probably could do nothing. He was ignorant of their 

242 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 243 

language, and the fact that he came under the aegis 
and on the staff of a conquering army would not have 
commended him to them as a preacher of mercy 
and brotherly love. When the Japanese withdrew 
from Korea " not a trace of Christianity was Jell. 
The country was closed to Heaven by the jealousy 
of Hell. ,, They brought back with them to their 
own country many prisoners of war, who passed the 
rest of their lives in Japan. The prisoners quickly 
acquired the Japanese language, and the missionaries 
extended to them the efforts which had been employed 
with such success among their conquerors and 
gaolers. Many of them were converted. Many after- 
wards clung to the faith through all the fierce fires 
of persecution and bore torture and agonising death 
with the same unquailing spirit as that which was 
universally displayed by the Japanese martyrs. The 
Korean martyrs in Japan were only known to the 
priests by their baptismal names, and there are now 
no means by which their native names can be 
identified. 

More than 180 years passed after their deaths 
before Christianity numbered another Korean among 
its believers. In 1601, Ricci, an Italian of noble 
birth, the great Jesuit missionary who performed 
in China the part of Xavier in Japan, took up 
his residence, at the invitation of the Court, 
in Peking ; and there his profound scholarship, not 
only in Western science, especially in mathematics 
and astronomy, but in the Chinese language and 
literature, as well as the unsullied purity of his life, 
made so profound an impression that he lived in 
honour till his death, in 1610, and death did not 
terminate the marks of respect which were rendered 
to him by a Government to whom his faith was 
utterly antagonistic. A splendid tomb was erected 
for his remains and a residence provided for his 



244 THE STORY OF KOREA 

spiritual successors. The great mission which Ricci 
founded has continued its work in Peking till this 
day ; his name is to this day the best known in the 
Empire of all the Europeans with whom China had 
her earliest associations. 

The members of the Korean embassies which 
annually carried the tribute to Peking had, in the 
freedom which they enjoyed during their stay in 
the northern capital, many opportunities of seeing and 
meeting both Ricci and his successors, which, it may 
be assumed, were liberally used by both the Jesuits 
in the zeal with which they embraced every chance of 
sowing the seeds of their Gospel, no matter how 
unpromising the soil, and by inquisitive Koreans, 
who, when not under the direct eye of their own 
Government, were not averse to acquire some know- 
ledge of the world of the West, which under their 
policy of national isolation was otherwise to them 
a sealed book. They received from 1 the Jesuits 
objects which were full of wonder — clocks, telescopes, 
eye-glasses, and translations in Chinese of European 
scientific works. They also received the outward 
symbols of the Roman Catholic faith — crucifixes, 
images, rosaries, pictures, and translations of religious 
works. The latter included Ricci's " Veritable 
Doctrine of the Lord of Heaven," a work dealing 
with the Divine attributes and character, in which 
a parable is drawn between Christianity and the 
teachings of the Chinese literati. It also appealed 
to the Koreans in that it contained a powerful ex- 
posure of Buddhism, which had fallen into disrepute 
among them. In 1720, the Korean Ambassador in 
Peking had many conferences with the missionaries, 
the result of which was that he found similarities 
between the Christian doctrines of self-denial, the 
purification of the heart, and the holy Incarnation 
and those of the literati of China. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 245 

For fifty years after their importation the books 
received little, if any, attention. Then they were 
studied and debated by a small coterie of noble 
Koreans, and one among them was so impressed that 
he resolved to order the rest of his life by their pre- 
cepts. He had no calendar to tell him of Sundays, 
so he abstained from work and devoted himself to 
prayer every seventh day of each lunar month ; he 
had no Church almanack nor Prayer Book to tell 
of fast days, so he abstained altogether from luxuries. 
He was not a Christian, was never baptized, and 
made no converts to his opinions and methods, and 
it was not till 1784 that the first Korean received the 
sacrament of baptism. 

There was a young scion of a noble family, dis- 
tinguished for the high offices in the Government 
which had been held by its members, whose firmness 
and strength of character procured for him the 
soubriquet of Piek-I (" Stone-wall "). 1 He was of 
great stature and unusual strength, and was therefore 
intended by his father for a military career ; but he 
was devoted to study, and not even the unbounded 
respect and unquestioning obedience that were due in 
Korea by a son to his father could induce him to 
adopt the career which his father wished. His read- 
ing included some of the imported books, both 
scientific and religious, and with the latter he became 
profoundly impressed. For thirteen years he 
pondered over them, vainly longing for further en- 
lightenment on the subject of which they treated. 
At last, in 1783, the father of one of his friends, a 
noble equally well born with himself, was nominated 
third ambassador to Peking, and he took his son 

1 This is the translation that is given in Dr. Griffis's " Corea, the 
Hermit Nation." The present writer has been unable to find the 
ideographs* in which the original is written, and cannot therefore 
verify the translation. 



246 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in his train. Piek-I eagerly seized the opportunity. 
He urged his friend to take this chance " which the 
Supreme Deity has evidently given in His pity for 
Korea and His desire to save it " — to go on his arrival 
in Peking to the temple of the Lord of Heaven, to 
confer with the priests, to examine their doctrine, and 
learn the ceremonies of their religion. " It is," he 
said, " a matter of life and death : eternity is in your 
hands : do not treat it lightly." 

The friend faithfully performed his task. The 
bishop of the Church at Peking at this time Was 
Alexander de Govea, a Portuguese of the Franciscan 
Order, a man scarcely less celebrated for his piety 
and learning than the Jesuit founder. By him Seng- 
houng-I — this was the friend's name — was converted 
and baptized, and he returned to his home full of all 
the zeal of a new convert, having promised to the 
bishop in Peking that he would suffer all the torments 
of death rather than abandon his faith, and that he 
would faithfully observe the evangelical laws, among 
them that " which forbade a plurality of wives." 
Piek-I eagerly absorbed the contents of the books 
which his friend brought with him, the explanations 
of the Sacraments, the Catechism, the Gospels, the 
lives of the saints, and the breviaries, and his faith in 
Christ was complete. A new life entered into his 
soul, and he could not keep his joy to himself. His 
enthusiasm and his arguments convinced other 
friends, and the waves of Christianity began to spread, 
not only among his friends in the capital but beyond 
its walls. 

Seng-houng-I — the first Korean to be formally 
admitted into the Church — received the baptismal 
name of Pierre, " as it was hoped that he would be 
the first stone of the Church in Korea. " Piek-I had 
commenced the work of conversion, so when he was 
baptized by Seng-houng-I, he received the name of 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 247 

Jean Baptiste, and the third convert, Kouen-I, was 
named Frangois Xavier, in honour of the first apostle 
of the East. All three became zealous propagandists, 
and converts flowed to them, both of their own and 
of the lower classes. Their success was not less 
striking than that of the first Jesuits in Japan. The 
condition of the common people in Korea, oppressed 
beyond human capacity of endurance, was at this 
time not unlike that of the people in Japan when 
Xavier began to preach. It was then the worst 
period of disorder in the history of Japan, when the 
sufferings of civil war were at their height, and a 
religion which promised eternal happiness after a 
life of misery was irresistibly attractive to the long- 
suffering peasants of both Japan and Korea. In both 
countries they were encouraged by the example of 
their own nobles, who, though actuated by higher 
motives than perhaps were the first peasants to 
embrace the faith, still saw in the promise of eternal 
salvation a reward that was far above all that earth 
could give them, even when its gifts were of the 
best. 

Christianity enjoyed fifty years of toleration in 
Japan, and it might possibly have continued to 
enjoy it indefinitely had it not been for the in- 
discretion of the missionaries. In Korea persecution 
broke on it at jonce. The sympathy of caste prevented 
any interference on the part of the officials with nobles 
of high rank, such as were the first converts, but 
in less than a year after the return of Seng-houng-I 
from Peking one of the lower ranks of officials was 
tortured and banished as a Christian, and soon after 
died from the injuries caused by the torture. He 
was the first Christian martyr in Korea. His co- 
religionists of noble birth demanded the right of 
sharing his fate, saying that they were of the same 
belief as the martyr and equally merited whatever 



248 THE STORY OF KOREA 

justice was meted out 'to him> but on them the Minister 
of Crimes dared not lay his hand and he refused 
even to listen to them. He was, however, determined 
to suppress the new religion from the first, and a 
public edict was soon issued against it. At the same 
time, family influence was brought to bear on all 
the known converts. Fathers and elder brothers used 
all the authority which long-established custom vested 
in them to bring back their erring wards to the 
ancestral cult, and where the prospect of torture and 
public odium had failed domestic tyranny in some 
cases succeeded. It is sad to tell that the two first 
apostates, the two first to yield to the threats and 
entreaties of their relatives, were the first converts. 
Both Seng-houng-I, the first stone of the Church, and 
Piek-I, the inheritor of the name of the Baptist, 
yielded to the prayers of their families and publicly 
renounced their faith. The last died — not having 
knowln a happy hour after his relapse — within a year ; 
the first lived to repent, to be received once more 
within the fold, and again to recant and accept offices 
which involved the public profession of idolatry. He 
was punished by the contempt, not only of the faithful 
Christians but by that of his fellow-heathens, 
and the reproach of having been the first to 
introduce Christianity into Korea clung not only to 
him but to his descendants. Notwithstanding his 
apostasy, he did not escape the fate of his more 
true and steadfast fellow-converts. On April 8, 
1 80 1, he was beheaded along with six Christians. 
"He, the first to be baptized ; he who had brought 
baptism and the gospel to his countrymen, marched 
to death with martyrs, but was not a martyr ; he 
was beheaded as a Christian, but died a renegade/ ' 
It is pathetic to read of the simple faith of the 
early Christians. They knew nothing of apostolic 
succession or of the ordination of priests, but they 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 249 

had heard of and one of them had seen bishop and 
priests in Peking, and they knew that the Church 
should have its ministers of varying rank, its 
organisation of government, its sacraments and 
services. So they elected a bishop and priests from 
among their own ranks, and all the Holy Sacraments 
of the Church were administered by the elected 
hierarchy, according to the lights that were afforded 
by the books in their possession, and devoutly re- 
ceived by all the converts. But when their toy 
church had existed for two years doubts began ;to 
assail them, and at great personal risk one of their 
number secretly left his home and made the long, 
perilous, and arduous journey of more than a 
thousand miles to Peking to consult Bishop Govea. 
In due time he brought back the Bishop's reply, 
written on silk in order that it might be the more 
easily hidden and carried. It was that the only 
Sacrament which the converts could administer was 
that of baptism. Then the same messenger imade 
the journey once more, this time to beg for ithe 
services of one of the European priests to instruct 
them and administer the Sacraments which they could 
not, and also to submit for the opinion of the bishop 
certain questions of faith. Again the journey was 
safely performed. A promise was brought back that 
a priest would be sent to them : they were instructed 
how to make wine from grapes and all that was 
required for the formal celebration of the Sacrament 
of baptism was given to them — chalice, missals, orna- 
ments, &c. They were told at the same time that 
the worship of ancestors was inconsistent with the 
sincere profession of the Christian faith. 

The worship of ancestors is one of the cardinal 
elements of Confucianism, the recoginised religion 
of Korea, where it was carried to its extreme extent 
and where it was also the foundation of the strongest 



250 THE STORY OF KOREA 

family ties. Its neglect meant the abandonment of 
everything that the Korean held most sacred in the 
duty which he owed to his king, his country, and his 
family. Hitherto, the converts, in their simple faith, 
had united their old observances with the Christian 
ceremonies, and while careful of their duty to God, 
had not neglected what they and their forefathers 
had been taught for countless generations was their 
chief duty on earth. Now they were suddenly told 
that, if sincere in their new faith, they must incur 
the deepest odium of their fellow-citizens and the 
penalties of the law, by abandoning the principal 
element in the observance of the old. 

When Ricci inaugurated his great mission in 
Peking he declared that the worship of ancestors, 
which dated in China from centuries before the 
Christian era, and which the Koreans received from 
China, was not inconsistent with Christianity. He 
considered it to be merely a civil ceremony. This 
was in keeping with the policy of the Jesuits, who 
endeavoured wherever it was possible to reconcile 
in their missionary work native with Christian 
observances, and to avoid offence against time- 
honoured beliefs. Much of Ricci's success as a 
proselytiser was no doubt due to his liberality, which 
was not shared by the other sects of the Roman 
Church. Govea was a Franciscan. He did not give 
his decision without due thought, nor until he had 
consulted all the oldest and most able missionaries 
in China, but to him and to them the practice was 
equally abhorrent, and the decision that it must 
be abandoned by the Korean Christians was un- 
equivocal. 

It is somewhat difficult for a layman, not of the 
Roman Church, to see how reverence for parents 
and ancestors, even if carried to an extreme degree, 
can conflict with an earnest belief in God, or how 




SEOUL — THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 250. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 251 

a very few of the simplest and briefest observances, 
practised nightly before the tablets which stand in 
the living room of every household, high or low, 
in China, Japan, and Korea, can constitute such a 
violation of the Second Commandment as to merit 
banishment from the Christian fold, but so it was 
and is still held by all missionaries in the East, not 
those of the Roman faith alone. Little more than 
twenty years ago the practice was unequivocally con- 
demned by the General Conference of Protestant 
Missionaries in Shanghai, and Nonconformists have 
been no less rigid in their attitude towards it, no 
less wanting in tolerance and liberality, than the 
most devout Catholics. Ancestor worship is the 
foundation, not only of the religion but of the loyalty, 
patriotism, and of all the bonds of the household life 
and domestic happiness of every man, woman, and 
child in China, Japan, and Korea. The reverence and 
affection which it teaches for all those who have gone 
before are the sentiments that from earliest child- 
hood are most deeply implanted in every heart, and 
they have done nothing but good to the nation, the 
family, and the individual. It is always difficult 
to eradicate a faith that has been held from child- 
hood. It is still more difficult when the abandonment 
of the old faith involves in it a condemnation of those 
who are held most dear and an acceptance of the 
belief that honour paid to their memories is a wicked 
form of idolatry that is odious in the sight of God. 
The present writer has always believed that this in- 
hibition has been the most formidable obstacle that 
has stood in the way of missionary success in the 
Far East, and he has had abundant reason to view 
with considerable incredulity the assurance, honestly 
given by many of the best and greatest missionaries 
of the present day, that their converts have entirely 
abandoned the practice of their old cult. 



252 THE STORY OF KOREA 

The results of Govea's instructions were disastrous 
in Korea. Many recanted who thought themselves 
Christians, and had been willing to brave persecu- 
tion for their faith, but were shocked at the new 
limitation that was imposed on what was their second 
nature. Many more complied and continued firm. 
Nothing can be kept secret in Korea. The people 
are the most irrepressible gossips in the world, and 
the news soon spread that some among them were 
neglecting their most sacred duty. Such sacrilege 
must, it was believed, bring misfortune both on the 
family and on the nation. In 1801, the country was 
unhappily visited by a great drought which seemed 
to verify the worst predictions, and a storm of odium 
broke on the Christians that speedily turned into 
active persecution. Many martyrs died after cruel 
tortures which they bore unflinchingly, and among 
the martyrs was the priest, a young Chinaman named 
Tsiou, whom Govea in fulfilment of his promise had 
sent from Peking, choosing him for this dangerous 
mission in preference to his European colleagues for 
his knowledge of Chinese literature, and the similarity 
of his features to those of the Koreans, as well as 
for his fervid piety and zeal. He was both the 
first Christian priest to labour among the Korean 
people and the first to obtain the crown of martyr- 
dom. He succeeded in making his way to Seoul in 
1794, and there for six months ministered to the 
converts who thronged to receive the Sacraments from 
him. In his ignorance of the customs of the country, 
he readily received all who came to him, great though 
the crowd was, and among them, was one who proved 
a traitor and betrayed his presence to the authorities. 
Orders were given for his immediate arrest, but he 
was warned in time and escaped to another house 
while a Korean Christian remained in that which he 
had left, and tried, when the officers came, to pass 






THE FIRST PERSECUTION 253 

himself off as the Chinese priest for whom they were 
searching. His identity was soon discovered, and 
with two other fellow-converts, both of whom had 
assisted in bringing Tsiou across the frontier, t he 
was brought before the judges. All three were tor- 
tured many times. They were beaten, their arms and 
legs dislocated, their knees crushed, but they were 
firm through all their sufferings and refused to betray 
either the priest or any of their fellow-converts. 

This was in the reign of King Sunjo (i 784-1 800), 
a capable and merciful ruler who always refused to 
sanction any wholesale persecution. But absolute 
though he was, he could not resist the universal 
clamour of his subjects for the blood of the three 
tortured converts, and he was at last forced to sign 
their death-warrants. The three were then beheaded, 
and their bodies thrown into the river, an indignity 
bitter in the extreme to the Koreans, among whom 1 
the rites of burial are always performed with 
punctilious and solemn ceremony. The priest would 
undoubtedly have been taken and shared their fate, 
had not the merciful King ordered his officers to 
moderate their zeal. He found refuge with a 
Christian lady of noble birth, who herself afterwards 
became a martyr, who for three months, unknown 
to all the other inmates of her home, kept him hidden 
and fed him in an outhouse used for the storage of 
firewood. Then, having won the sympathy of her 
mother, she brought him into the house, and as Korean 
law held the house of a noble inviolate, Tsiou lived 
there in safety for three years, studying the language 
and performing the duties of his office as far as his 
opportunities permitted, always both in and out of 
doors using the greatest precautions against dis- 
covery. Some of the members and servants even of 
the family which sheltered him did not know of his 
presence. 



254 THE STORY OF KOREA 

In 1800 King Sunjo died, and his death "was a 
misfortune to all his people, who lost in him both a 
friend and a wise and merciful ruler, but above all 
to the Christians., to whom the news of his death 
came as a thunderbolt." They felt that their last 
protection against their persecutors was gone, and 
their fears proved to be only too well founded. 

The dead King was succeeded by his son, a boy of 
twelve years of age, during whose minority his grand- 
mother acted as regent. She was bitterly opposed 
to Christianity, and once the funeral ceremonies of 
the late King, which lasted five months, were com- 
pleted, she lost no time in issuing a decree pro- 
hibiting Christianity throughout the whole realm, 
placing its believers under the ban of the law, order- 
ing their arrest wherever found, and giving full power 
to the judges to punish them without mercy. This 
was followed in the next year by a still more drastic 
decree, in which it was proclaimed that Christians 
should be treated as rebels, and in order that none 
should escape, that all householders should be regis- 
tered in groups of five, all the members of which 
should be mutually responsible for each other and 
the headman of the five responsible for all. 

It was impossible to hope that the Chinese priest 
could long remain hidden, even in the sanctuary of 
a noble's house, while the search for native Christians 
was being so vigorously pursued. It was known 
that he was in the country, and even under the late 
King the police had made efforts to find him. Now 
their efforts were redoubled. Tsiou, thinking that 
the persecution of the natives might be moderated if 
he returned to China and it became known that he 
had done so, escaped from Seoul and succeeded in 
reaching the frontier town of Aichiu. There his 
conscience smote him. He was abandoning his flock 
in the hour of peril. He returned straight to Seoul, 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 255 

and though the Christians were willing again to 
undergo the great danger of hiding him he refused 
to allow them to do so, and going quite alone to the 
prison, he surrendered himself, saying, " I am the 
priest for whom you have been so long searching in 
vain." His trial and condemnation soon followed, 
and on May 31, 1801, the day of the Holy Trinity, 
he was publicly beheaded, and his head was after- 
wards exposed like that of a common criminal for 
five days . 

In the preceding chapter J it has been told how, in 
the year 1846, the Korean Government attempted 
to justify itself to that of France for having put 
three French missionaries to death, by saying that 
they had in accordance with the law inflicted the 
death penalty on a Chinaman who had been guilty 
of the same offence as the French. The case they 
then referred to was that of Tsiou, but boldly as 
they quoted it in 1846, they were not at all easy in 
their minds as to the responsibility which they had 
incurred to their suzerain by the execution of one of 
his subjects. In accordance with the terms of their 
convention between the Empire and the kingdom, 
" every subject of either found upon the territory of 
the other must be sent back to his own Sovereign." 
Some of the Korean ministers wished this course to 
be taken before Tsiou's execution ; but the majority, 
unable to reconcile themselves to parting with the 
chief representative of a religion which all hated, 
voted for his death, and persuaded the Queen Regent 
to sign the warrant. When all was over, they became 
uneasy at what they had done, and caused a report 
to be spread among their own people that Tsiou was 
not a Chinaman but a native of Quelpart. When the 
next annual embassy went to Peking a long written 
explanation was sent to the Emperor by the Regent 

1 Vide p. 228. 



256 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in the name of the young King, in which it was 
alleged that Tsiou's real nationality was only dis- 
closed by his accomplices after his death ; that he 
was one of a set of brigands who had brought trouble 
on the " Little Kingdom," and had been justly 
punished ; that nothing appeared in him during his 
trial, neither in his language, his dress, nor his out- 
ward appearance, to show that he was not a Korean. 
The judges, it was added, saw in him only the 
leader of the renegades among their own countrymen, 
and it was as such that he was condemned and 
executed. The opening sentences of the letter des- 
cribed both the fidelity of the Koreans to the religion 
and morality which they had received from China, 
and the wickedness of the Christians : 

" His Imperial Majesty knows that since the day when the remains 
of the army of the Yen retired to the East, 1 the Little Kingdom has 
always been distinguished for its punctuality in fulfilling all 
obligations ordered by rites, justice, and loyalty, and for its general 
fidelity and duty. This has in all ages been acknowledged by the 
Middle Court [the Court of China] . This kingdom, which has always 
preserved its purity of manners, esteems above everything the 
doctrine of Confucius. No books other than those of Chou-cha, of 
Ming, or of Lo 2 have ever been admitted into this kingdom by 
literati or mandarins ; much less have they ever been studied by 
them. The very women and children of the streets and cottages 
are familiar with the five fundamental duties and the three great 
cables, the props of society, and make them alone the ordinary rule 
of conduct. All other doctrine is strange to the Little Kingdom, 
and error has never penetrated it. 

But about ten years ago a sect of monsters appeared, barbarous 
and infamous persons, who set themselves up as votaries of a 
doctrine which they say they have brought from Europe, who 
utter blasphemies against Heaven, affect only scorn for our learned 



1 That is, from the year 1122 B.C., when Ki Tse emigrated to and 
founded Korea on the fall of the Yen dynasty in China (vide p. 51). 

2 The books of Confucius. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 257 

men, rebel against their prince, stifle all feeling of filial piety, abolish 
sacrifice to ancestors and burn the memorial tablets ; who, preaching 
a heaven and a hell, fascinate and draw to their side ignorant and 
imbecile people ; who by means of baptism, efface the atrocities of 
their sect ; who conceal depraved books, and with witchcraft 
assemble women from all parts and live like the brutes and the birds 
of the poultry-yard. Some call themselves spiritual fathers (priests) 
others devotees to the religion (Christians). They change their 
names to take titles and surnames, thus following the example of 
the brigands Pe-ling and Houang-kin. 1 They devote themselves 
to divination and extend error and trouble from the capital to re- 
mote provinces. Their doctrine spreads with the rapidity of fire 
and their followers multiply in a terrifying manner. 

The Emperor in his reply severely reprimanded 
the King for a suggestion in a part of his letter 
that we have not included in the quotation that 
Christianity first became known to the Koreans owing 
to attaches of the annual embassies having heard 
of it from the Europeans who were living in Peking. 
1 That is a calumny/' said the Emperor ; " they must 
have heard of it from elsewhere. Europeans have 
been allowed to live in the Mother capital because 
they understand mathematics, and we apply to them 
to reckon the time and observe the heavens. They 
have their use in the department of mathematics, but 
they are not permitted to communicate with strangers. 
These Europeans, crossing the seas to come to 
Peking, all know how to submit themselves to public 
order and to obey laws. In more than one hundred 
years that they have been here they have never 
secretly preached religion, and no one has ever been 
led astray by them." 2 But not a word was said in 
the published version of the letter as to the fate of 

1 Secret Societies in China. 

2 In commenting on this sentence, Dallet says : " No other 
Government in the world would have had the effrontery to deny 
facts that were known to all its subjects." 

17 



258 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the Emperor's own subject, from which it was in- 
ferred by the Christians, either that his Court had 
been mollified by a large bribe, or that the full 
contents of the letter had not been made known. 
Be the explanation as it may, it is quite evident 
that in executing the Chinese priest the Koreans felt 
that they had exceeded their authority, and the pre- 
cedent was not one, as they afterwards alleged it 
to be, which justified them in putting French subjects 
to death without notice to the Government of 
France. 

In 1 80 1 Christianity had spread largely among the 
lower classes of the people, and the total number of 
believers was estimated at ten thousand. On them 
the officials had no compunction in carrying out the 
orders of the Regent. They were arrested every- 
where, thrown into prison, tortured, and executed. 
Nor were the higher classes spared. Even women 
of noble family who, according to Korean law, were 
exempt from every penalty unless incurred by the 
treason of the hea'd of the family, were dragged 
to prison and beheaded, on one occasion five suffering 
simultaneously, among them the lady who had 
courageously sheltered the Chinese priest. Through- 
out the whole year and during part of 1802 the exe- 
cutioners v/ere never idle, and the vigour of the 
persecution did not cease till the enemies of the 
faith were glutted with blood. When it did, 
Christianity was ruined in Korea. There were many 
true believers left, but their leaders had all been killed. 
The survivors were poor and ignorant, scattered 
among the heathen, without communion with each 
other. Almost all their books and the instruments of 
service had been destroyed, or were buried in the 
earth, or hidden in holes in walls. The terror that 
was spread by the terrible events of 1801 sank into 
the very souls of the believers, and none dared to 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 259 

practise the observances of the Church except in 
the closest secrecy. In 1811, they found courage 
and means to send letters to the Bishop at Peking, 
and through him to the Pope, imploring the aid of 
a spiritual director, but neither Pope nor Bishop could 
help them except with sympathy. The Pope was 
a prisoner at Fontainebleau ; the French Revolution 
had deprived the Church at Peking of all its material 
resources : it was now exposed to persecution in 
China and could hardly support itself, and the good 
old Bishop, " his heart broken/* could not even give 
the Koreans hope of help in the future. In 181 5, 
in 1 8 19, and in 1827 there were more persecutions. 
In all except the last there was the same record 
with all its ghastly details of torture and execu- 
tion. In the last the death penalty w r as not inflicted. 
The King, following the example of his predecessor 
Sunjo, refused to sanction the sanguinary measures 
of his ministers, and only imprisonment was im- 
posed, and when five years later the country was 
visited by long-continued rains and consequent floods, 
and the King, following the usual custom, endeavoured 
to propitiate the favour of Heaven by acts of mercy, 
the Christians were included in the general amnesty 
to prisoners and released. Strange to say, though 
the last persecution was the shortest (it only con- 
tinued for three months) and least severe of all that 
had taken place, the ratio of those who apostatised 
while it lasted was the highest. 

Nearly fifty years had passed since the first Korean 
was baptized in Peking, and throughout the whole 
of this long period the native Christians had only 
once enjoyed the countenance of an ordained priest, 
and all their entreaties for further spiritual guidance 
had been in vain. And yet though without priests 
and forced to scatter and seek shelter in the lonely 
mountain fastnesses, they had clung to their simple 



260 THE STORY OF KOREA 

beliefs, and to the best of their lights had carried 
out the observances of their Church, undismayed by 
cruel persecution and hideous suffering, long im- 
iprisonment, and poverty and ruin that were em- 
bittered by the alienation of relatives and friends. 
There were many relapses among them, but they 
fade into insignificance in comparison with the 
numbers of those who proved steadfast in the worst 
hours of trial. No Christians— neither in Rome nor 
in Japan — have ever gone through more or greater 
trials for their faith. 

In Europe the wars of Napoleon were now long 
over, the Bourbons were on the throne of France, 
the temporal power of the Pope was restored, and 
he was again on the papal throne of Rome. Some 
years had, however, to elapse before the Society of 
Foreign Missions at Paris, the Society which, since 
its foundation at the close of the sixteenth century, 
controlled and provided for all the Roman mis- 
sionaries to the Far East, had sufficiently recovered 
from the ruin brought upon it by the confiscations of 
the French revolutionaries to undertake new fields of 
work. All the funds at its disposal were insufficient 
to provide the most frugal support for those already 
in existence or to send new workers, and it was not 
till the year 1829 that the Society was in a position 
to accede to the urgent representations of the Pope 
and the pathetic prayers that had been so often made 
by the Korean converts. The last of these had been 
received so far back as 1825. It urged the Pope 
not only to send priests but a ship to the Korean 
shores, the prestige of which would secure the liberty 
to practise their religion in safety, both to priests 
and converts, and open the way for the entry of 
Christianity into Korea by the sea, " the way by 
which it had from its earliest days reached the most 
distant countries in the world." 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 261 

"The Koreans are for the most part," it was said in the latest 
Korean letter, " ignorant and timid, inclined to despise and ill treat 
those who seem to be more ignorant and timid than themselves. 
But they are great lovers of novelties and judging by the reports we 
have heard of the wisdom and strength of Europeans, Koreans would 
regard them as spirits. If then a European ship were to appear 
suddenly, our people would be too astounded at first to know what 
to do, but once they learnt the virtue and strength of the Westerners 
they would receive them with kindness and joy. Even if inclined 
to injure them, they would do nothing without first consulting the 
Emperor of China, and he would no doubt be of opinion that a 
European ship on a foreign shore was no business of his. If 
missionaries only were sent they could not escape the vigilance of 
the officials or the mistrust of the people, and all hope of spreading 
Christianity would vanish." 

The militant suggestions of the letter were not 
adopted, but after inquiry from all the experienced 
missionaries in the East as to the practicability of 
opening a mission in Korea, especially as to the 
possibility of a European being able to enter a 
country whose frontier was jealously guarded against 
all foreigners, it was decided that a Vicar-aposto- 
llqae should be appointed. Great care had to be 
taken in the selection of the man best fitted for 
so dangerous an enterprise, but this difficulty was 
solved when Barthelemy Bruguiere, a missionary who 
had already laboured for five years in Siam and had 
been appointed Coadjutor-Bishop in that diocese, 
offered himself for the work. He was a man of equal 
intelligence and energy who had devoted himself, 
body and soul, to his duties, and he was at once 
accepted by the Pope as the pioneer of European 
priests in Korea. In July, 1832, he left Singapore 
(the diocese of Siam included the Straits Settlements) 
for his new work. Another priest of the diocese, 
Jacques Honore Chastan, was eager to accompany 
him but was told that he must wait another oppor- 
tunity. Help was, however, provided for him from 



262 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Europe. Two young Chinese aspirants for the priest- 
hood were being educated at Naples. Both when 
they heard of the proposed mission to Korea volun- 
teered to accompany M. Bruguiere, and the one who 
was chosen, whose name was Yu, had already arrived 
in China, and was seeking for means to enter Korea 
when Bruguiere sailed from Singapore. 

Nearly three hundred years previously Xavier had 
made the voyage to Japan from Malacca, in infinite 
peril from pirates and storms. In Japan he suffered 
great privations of cold, hunger, and fatigue, when 
on his way on foot from Yamaguchi to Kioto, *a 
journey of three hundred miles, which it took him 
thirty days to accomplish. All that he suffered fades 
into nothingness when compared with the miseries 
that in the nineteenth century attended the land stages 
of Bruguiere's longer journey. It was a time of 
Christian persecution in Northern China, and he had 
to travel disguised as a Chinaman. He could not 
wear the Chinese shoes, so, to avoid the Chinese 
officials, and prevent notice of his approach filtering 
to Korea, he was forced to walk long distances over 
rocky paths and hills barefooted. He was often 
without food and could procure none without be- 
traying his disguise. He was deserted by guides, 
and wandered, lost and alone, among the hills and 
forests of Manchuria. The guides who helped him 
almost stifled him with the coverings with which they 
hid him in the native inns in the burning heat of 
August, and on the roads he could scarcely breathe 
owing to the hat and veil in which they obscured 
his face. He contracted dysentery and itch, and 
suffered intensely from both, and was not allowed 
to call a native doctor to his help, lest his identity 
should be exposed. Throughout all his travels his 
ignorance of the language and customs of China 
caused numerous difficulties, which added to the 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 263 

anxiety from which he was never wholly free, but 
he never once let his courage fail or lost his deter- 
mination to persevere in the task he had undertaken. 
Three years were spent on the entire journey, and 
the frontier of Korea was at last reached, but he 
was destined not to cross it. Worn out with all the 
hardships through which he had passed, he died on 
October 13, 1835, when the goal for the attainment 
of which he had suffered so much was almost within 
his view. Though he never set foot in the country 
he is entitled to be called the first European martyr 
of the Church in Korea. 

The place which he left vacant was eagerly occu- 
pied by Pierre Philibert Maubant, a missionary in 
Tartary, whose offer of his help in Korea had been 
accepted by Bruguiere. He had followed Bruguiere 
in the last few stages of his journey and came to the 
place where he died in time to celebrate the Burial 
Service at his grave. Then he resolved to persevere 
alone. Five Korean Christians were awaiting 
Bruguiere on the frontier. They met Maubant 
instead. Guided by them, he crossed the wide strip 
of neutral desert and two of the three frozen branches 
of the River Yalu, and then towards midnight, almost 
exhausted with the fatigue and anxiety of the last 
long day on foot, he reached the third branch, on the 
left bank of which was the Korean frontier guard. 
The rest of the story may be told in his own words : 

u We had been travelling since the preceding midnight almost 
always on foot. The man who was to carry me, then took me on 
his back, and we advanced slowly, crossing the river, to within 
about a perch from the gate of Aichiu, where was the Korean custom 
house. Instead of exposing ourselves to the danger of an inspection 
and the questions which the excited officers usually put to each 
traveller, we slipped into a drain pipe constructed in the town wall. 
One of my three guides had already passed through and was within 
gun shot in front, when a dog at the custom house, seeing us coming 



264 THE STORY OF KOREA 

out of the hole began to bark. Then, I thought to myself, it is 
finished. The officers will come ; they will find us in a fraudulent 
act, will question us at length, and without doubt will recognise me 
as a foreigner. Let God's will be done ! But God did not allow 
things to happen as I feared ; we continued to advance into the 
town and no one appeared. 

" I thought we were going at once to some inn or house where I 
could be hidden, but not at all. We had still another custom house 
to pass. There was another aqueduct in tke walls of the quarter 
where we were so we slipped into it. At the moment I went in I 
saw, at the other end, a man passing with a lamp in his hand. Again 
I thought of our great danger, but nothing annoying happened to us. 
At last, a few steps further on, I was taken into a little room shaped 
like a large baker s oven. Here I found those of my guides who had 
gone on in front. We partook of a miserable meal of raw salted 
turnips and rice boiled in water, and we stretched ourselves out as 
well as we could, six of us, in this narrow space, to pass the rest of 
the night. Two or three hours later, we had to take a second meal 
like the last and make a start an hour before dawn. My feet were 
covered with blisters ; but troubles of this sort do not stop a 
missionary. I started on foot as I had done the day before. Two 
or three leagues from Aichiu I found two other Christians with three 
horses. From there, I continued my journey chiefly on horseback." 

Once past the frontier, the rest of the way was 
easy. The journey to the capital was made on horse- 
back, and there he found the native Christians and 
the Chinese priest Yu who had secretly entered Korea 
in advance of him. Unfortunately, Yu proved, not- 
withstanding his education at Naples and the zeal 
which had first prompted him to volunteer his services 
for Korea, a very unworthy successor of the young* 
Chinese priest who was martyred in 1801. He 
abused his sacred office by extortion and repeated 
violations of his vow of chastity, thwarted Maubant, 
whose coming he resented as an encroachment on his 
own sphere, in all his measures, and finally had to 
be sent back to China under a threat of excommuni- 
cation. Maubant was the first European to enter 
Seoul since the shipwrecked Dutchmen were there 







STREET IN OLD SEOUL. 

{From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 264. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 265 

two hundred years before. Little over a year later 
he was joined by Chastan, who, after waiting his 
opportunity for two years, during which he laboured 
among the native Christians of Manchuria, passed 
the frontier disguised as a poor man carrying his 
own pack, and in another year, on December 18, 
1837, Laurent Marie Joseph Imbert, Bishop of Capse 
and Vicar-Apostolic, also succeeded in crossing the 
frontier, and " the Korean soil was for the first time 
trodden by the feet of a bishop." All the three first 
missionaries were of peasant birth, but all were dis- 
tinguished for their learning and piety and for the 
zeal and success with which they had worked for 
years in other fields. 

For two years all three laboured assiduously, not 
only in the capital but in the provinces both in the 
north and in the south. They made long and difficult 
journeys, enduring constant privations, to satisfy the 
crowds of Christians who thirsted for the Sacraments 
and who had confessions to make extending over 
twenty, thirty, or forty years. Korean mourning 
lends itself to the complete disguise of the identity 
of the mourner. A dress of unbleached grass cloth, 
an enormous hat of plaited straw many feet in 
circumference, its rims curving downwards, a screen 
of cloth held before the mouth, and a staff 
differentiate the mourner in such a way that none 
can recognise him or mistake him for other than 
a mourner ; and etiquette forbids that he should 
address or be addressed by others in the streets. 
Disguised in this garb, the priests went everywhere 
safe from all interference by those who did not know 
them, and the thought of betrayal never entered the 
minds of their converts. The condition of the con- 
verts was pitiable. Many of them were in prison. 
Many more, abandoning homes and property, had 
taken refuge in barren mountain solitudes where they 



266 THE STORY OF KOREA 

suffered indescribable miseries, and some died from 
cold and hunger, but where they were free from 
the odium and persecution that their open neglect of 
ancestral worship brought upon them. To the dis- 
tress which their condition caused to the priests was 
added the never-ending anxiety lest the converts 
should be exposed by discovery to the terrible 
penalties which the law sanctioned for those who 
practised the " pernicious doctrine." Every service 
had to be held, every Sacrament administered, with 
the utmost secrecy, and the priests were sometimes 
unknown even to some of the members of the families 
with whom they lodged in their wanderings. 

With all its disabilities their work flourished. 
They had been told before they came that they would 
find thirty to forty thousand Christians in Korea, 
but if there ever had been this number persecution 
and neglect had so diminished them that Maubant 
found on his arrival there were at the utmost not more 
than six thousand. At the close of 1838 there were 
more than nine thousand, and at the dawn of the year 
1839 the Church in Korea seemed to be entering 
on a bright future of peace and prosperity. " But 
the tree of faith has never been firmly planted in a 
heathen land without being watered with blood, and 
the more it grows the more must blood be given in 
abundance to its roots." 

In 1839 ^e Regent, who had shown some toler- 
ance, retired from office, and the executive fell into 
the hands of one who was a venemous enemy to 
Christianity. At no time had the embers of perse- 
cution ceased to smoulder, and every year, even those 
in which the prospects of safety seemed to be 
brightest, had its isolated instances of the imprison- 
ment and execution of converts whose position or 
activity brought them into prominent notice. Now 
persecution was once more to burst into 'Violent flames, 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 267 

and all the worst horrors of i 80 1 were to be intensified. 
The new Regent lost no time in putting his authority 
in force, and all the evil passions of the enemies of 
the faith were at once let loose, while terror produced 
many apostates who purchased their own safety by 
the betrayal of their fellows. Men, women, and 
children were arrested wholesale, tortured with beat- 
ings which made the flesh fall off their bodies ; their 
legs were broken so that the marrow protruded from 
the bones, and delicate women of noble birth were 
subjected to indignities which caused them to suffer 
more than the worst physical torture would have done. 
Many gave way. Some who had held a prominent 
place among the believers not only renounced the 
faith which they had done so much to spread, but, 
under the dictation of the judges, " repeated the 
foulest imprecations on God, on the Holy Trinity, 
on the most holy Virgin." These were exceptions. 
The majority held firm through every trial, and many 
sought the glorious crown of martyrdom and calmly 
bowed their heads to the executioners' swords. In 
Japan the victims of the persecution, while including 
many, both men and women, of high rank, feudal 
chiefs of great principalities, and ladies of the Court, 
were for the most part of the lowest and poorest 
classes who, according to their beliefs, were changing, 
after one sharp moment of agonising pain, lives of 
down-trodden serfs for the glories of paradise. In 
Korea the reverse was the case. The victims were 
mainly of the upper classes, who had all that they 
could desire on earth — rank, power, wealth, luxury, 
and ease. All these they gladly sacrificed, and under- 
went the imprisonment, torture, and shameful deaths 
from which their rank should have legally exempted 
them. 

It is not possible within our limits to relate 
the particulars of individual cases. We shall only 






268 THE STORY OF KOREA 

make one exception as an illustration of all. A 
mother and two daughters of noble family, whose 
estate was some distance from the capital, were con- 
verted, but the husband and father was a violent 
enemy of Christianity, and they were therefore 
obliged to practise their religion in secret. The 
eldest daughter, arrived at marriageable age, was 
betrothed in the usual way by her father to a heathen, 
but rather than submit to such a marriage the girl 
pretended lameness, and for three years remained 
prone on her bed. Then the intended bridegroom, 
weary of waiting, married another. The second sister 
in her turn was betrothed in like manner. She wished 
to preserve her virginity, and so she fled from her 
home, and to prevent any search being made for her, 
she stained her clothes with blood, tore them in 
tatters, and scattered the pieces in the thickets near 
her home. Her parents thought she had been 
devoured by a tiger, and mourned for her as dead. 
Both sisters took refuge with an aunt in the capital, 
also a Christian, and within a few months the mother 
was secretly told of their safety. The father, seeing 
that her grief had ceased, begged her to hide nothing 
from him, and when he heard all he forgave his 
daughters and promised to thwart their faith no more. 
They were soon visited by their mother, and mother 
and aunt, also sisters, the two daughters, and two 
other women, one of whom was well born like them- 
selves, whom the aunt supported as Christians, were 
all together in one house. They heard of the martyr- 
dom of other Christian women, and all six, eager 
to follow such an example and give their lives for 
Christ, resolved to surrender themselves to the 
authorities. 

The judge of the Criminal Court was astounded 
at their action. He besought them to renounce their 
errors, and when they refused they were flogged and 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 269 

remitted to prison. Five days afterwards they were 
again brought before the court, and the judge asked 
them whether, " having tasted the sufferings of prison, 
they were now of a better frame of mind.' 1 " How 
can we say one thing to the judge to-day and the 
opposite to-morrow? " was the reply of all. The 
judge endeavoured to argue with them, to overcome 
their firmness, first by gentleness, then by threats, 
and finally by further tortures, but all were in vain. 
They were again all remitted to prison, this time 
to the common gaol for thieves, where, after having 
suffered much from hunger and thirst, and from the 
insanitary surroundings to which they were entirely 
unused, one died of the putrid gaol fever. The others 
were beheaded. 

During the first stages of the persecution the three 
missionaries were hidden by their followers in 
different secluded parts of the country, the Bishop in 
a lonely village on the coast, lying in a valley that was 
equally obscured from passing boats and wayfarers 
on land. A boat was kept in readiness for him, so 
that if the contingency arose he could escape by sea. 
Gradually it leaked out from apostatising prisoners 
that there were three foreigners in the land, and all 
the energies of the police were vainly exerted in 
the efforts to trace them. The Bishop's mitre, the 
mission chest, and other evidence were found, but the 
three foreigners were securely hidden, and their re- 
treats were known only to a few of the converts. 
When the persecution was at its height, and the news 
came to the Bishop of all that his people were suffer- 
ing he determined to surrender himself and to send 
the two priests out of the country, hoping thereby 
that, vengeance having been taken on the principal 
foreign offender, the natives would be spared. On 
July 29th all three met at great peril, and thje 
two priests then refused to obey their Bishop, either 



270 THE STORY OF KOREA 

to forsake their people or to submit the boatmen, 
who might have helped to land them on the coast 
of China, to the penalties which they would incur by 
doing so. The three separated, only to be united 
again when they appeared before the judges. On 
the morning of August ioth the Bishop celebrated 
his last Mass, and then, alone and unattended, went 
to the place where he knew the police were and there 
surrendered himself. He was bound with the red 
ropes that were used to strangle criminals, brought 
to the capital, and when he refused to disclose the 
hiding-place of the two priests subjected to the 
torture " bending of the bones.' ' * 

The priests were penniless. The mission funds had 
been taken with the chest : the converts around them 
were too poor to help them, all had been reduced 
to indigence, and they had to beg their daily bread 
in imminent danger of detection. They had obeyed 
the orders which their superior had given them at 
their last meeting to continue their hiding till they 

1 There were three varieties of this torture. In the first, the knees 
and the two big toes were tightly bound together and two sticks 
were thrust into the space between the knees and toes. The sticks 
were then pulled in opposite directions until the bones of both 
legs were bent outwards like a bow, after which they were allowed 
to return slowly to their original shape. In the second, only the 
toes were tied together. A large wedge of wood was then placed 
between the legs. Ropes were passed round each knee, and the 
ropes were pulled in opposite directions by two men and the knees 
forced inwards till the joints of the two knees touched. In the 
third, " the dislocation of the arms," the arms were tied below the 
elbows and behind the back, and the shoulders were forced towards 
each other by two large sticks used as levers. The arms were then 
untied and the executioner, placing his foot on the chest, pulled the 
arms towards him until the bones resumed their former position. 
When the torturers were experienced at their work they were able 
to carry it out in such a way that the bones only bent, but if they 
were novices, the bones broke at the first pressure. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION 271 

heard from him again. Just before his arrest he 
sent Maubant a few lines in Latin. " The good 
shepherd gives his life for his sheep : give your- 
selves to the police," and Maubant forwarded the 
letter to his colleague. Twelve days passed before 
they could meet. Then both surrendered, and in 
a few days all three were before the judges. They 
were bastinadoed and beaten, each receiving seventy 
blows from the cudgel before the sentence of death 
was passed on them. At last on September 21st 
they were carried in chains to the execution -ground, 
their hands bound behind their backs, with an escort 
of more than a hundred soldiers. 

" On the ground a stake had been planted from the top of which 
floated a flag, embroidered with the sentence of the condemned. 
When they arrived they were at once stripped of their garments, only 
their drawers being left. Then the soldiers bound their hands in 
front of their chests, passed long staves under their arms, and stuck 
arrows through their ears, and after sprinkling their faces with water 
powdered them with lime. Six men then carried each by the staves 
under their arms three times round the whole ground, amidst the 
derision and coarse gibes of the crowd. At last they were made to 
kneel and a dozen soldiers ran round them swords in hands, in mock 
combat, giving each of the kneeling priests a cut from the sabre as 
they passed. Chastan at the first blow, which merely grazed his 
shoulder, instinctively rose but immediately fell again on his knees. 
Imbert and Maubant never moved. When all was over, the bodies 
were exposed for three days, and then buried in the sand on the 
river bank." 

A watch was kept by disguised police lest they 
should be removed, but twenty days later seven or 
eight Christians, resolved to brave death if they failed, 
succeeded at a second attempt in raising the bodies, 
and having placed them in coffins, reinterred them in 
new graves on a hill about ten miles from the capital, 
and there they rest till this day. The sacrifice was 
in vain. The persecution continued with all its 



272 THE STORY OF KOREA 

bitterness both in the capital and in the provinces, 
and till the end of the year executions followed 
each other in rapid succession. It was only when 
the judges were sated with blood, when all the 
Christians who had not died were in prison, exiled, 
or scattered in the mountains, that it ceased. 

Its ultimate results were widely different to those 
which were the object of the Korean ministers. The 
comparison may be frivolous, but it is so a propos 
that it may perhaps be pardoned. " Made in 
Germany " gave to the industrial products of 
Germany an advertisement which largely increased 
their consumption in England — the very last result 
foreseen by the legislators responsible for it. So it 
was with Christianity in Korea : — 

" From the highest ministers of state down to the lowest servant 
of the prisons, judges, magistrates, nobles, literati, commoners, 
police, and executioners, in the most remote districts as well as in the 
capital, all heard of Christianity, all learned something of its 
principal dogmas. The seed of the Word of God, was carried by 
the tempest to the four winds of heaven and who shall say in how 
many souls the fruit of salvation sprang from the seed thus sown ? 
At any rate, from this time Koreans ceased to despise Christians and 
their doctrine. There was no diminution in the hostility of the 
Government ; but public opinion gave their due to the charity, 
modesty, patience, good faith, to all the virtues, of which the 
converts had given so many striking examples." x 



1 All the quotations both in this and in the succeeding chapter 
are, where not otherwise stated, taken from the " Histoire de 
l'Eglise de Coree." 



CHAPTER XIII 

CHRISTIANITY — PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 

The news of the death of the three missionaries 
was slow in reaching the outside world. Uneasiness 
was felt in the Church in China when, throughout 
the year 1840, no word came from them, but two 
years had passed ere the worst fears were confirmed. 
Three new missionaries — Jean Joseph Ferreol, a native 
of xAvignon, Ambroise Maistre, of Annecy, and Marie 
Antoine Nicholas Daveluy — had resolved to devote 
their lives to Korea, and when the death of Imbert 
was known, the first was consecrated as Bishop of the 
vacant diocese. In the meantime the Opium War 
of 1842 had taken place, and the military might of 
China had been shattered to pieces. Hongkong was 
ceded to Great Britain ; Nanking, the ancient capital 
of the south, was only saved from capture by a treaty 
of peace ; and five great cities of China were open 
to foreign trade and residence under conditions which 
provided fully for the security of life, property, and 
religion. The Koreans slowly and vaguely heard of 
the humiliation of their great suzerain, but Korea 
was still left closed and unassailed, was still obdur- 
ately determined to retain her conservative policy 
of isolation. For three years the three new mis- 
sionaries vainly sought a way into their sphere of 
work. Ferreol with great toil made his way through 
the almost unknown wilds of Manchuria in the hope 
of passing the north-east frontier at Hunchun, but 
he found the guards there no less strict than at 

18 273 



274 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Aichiu in the north-west, and he had to make his 
long journey back again to await another opportunity. 

Some years before, three young and promising 
proselytes had been smuggled out of the country and 
sent by Imbert to study for the priesthood at Macao. 
One of them was Andrew Kim, who amply repaid 
all the expense and trouble that had been expended 
on his behalf. He was not only a devout servant 
of the Church, but a fearless, enterprising, and re- 
sourceful man. He was the companion and guide 
of Ferr6ol in his efforts to cross the frontier, and 
when they failed, he, by his Bishops directions, evaded 
the guards and secretly returned to Seoul alone. 
There, weary of waiting for the spiritual assistance 
of which his fellow-Christians had none for six years, 
he conceived a bold plan, one full of physical peril, 
which only undaunted courage could have faced. He 
purchased a small fi x shing-boat for 146 dollars, and 
after much persuasion he induced eleven fellow- 
Christians, all fathers, sons, or relatives of martyrs, 
to embark with him. Only four of them were fisher- 
men, one was a house carpenter, and the rest peasants, 
and not one of them had ever been on the high sea. 
None of them knew anything of navigation, and they 
had to trust themselves to the pilotage of the clerical 
student who had passed all his life in a monastery. 
With such a crew Kim resolved to make his way in 
an open boat over one of the most stormy and fog- 
ridden seas in the world to Shanghai, a voyage of 
fully five hundred miles. The legal were not less than 
the physical perils. China had agreed by treaty to 
return to Korea all Korean sailors who landed on 
her coast, and those who were thus returned were 
tried and, if found guilty of wilfully leaving their 
country, were punished with death. 

The voyage realised in its perils all its worst antici- 
pations. For three days the little boat was help- 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 275 

lessly tossed on the mountainous sea in a storm 
of wind and rain : sails, rudder, provisions, and 
clothing were all swept away, and every moment was 
expected to be the last. When the storm subsided 
the plight of the crew was desperate. The boat 
was a helpless wreck, and for three days they had 
neither food nor water. Many Chinese junks passed 
them but took no notice of their signals of distress. 
At last one from Canton took pity on them and 
agreed, for a promise of 1,000 dollars, to tow them 
to Shanghai. There were more perils to be overcome, 
but they reached Wosung, the port at the entrance 
of the tributary of the Yangtsze on which Shanghai 
lies. They were quickly boarded by the Chinese 
officials of the port, to whom they represented them- 
selves as castaways. 

They would probably have met with little mercy 
from the Chinese, who, faithful to their treaty obliga- 
tions, would have arrested and sent back the whole 
crew to Korea by land. But the British fleet was at 
anchor at Wosung. Kim, on his arrival, had taken 
his anchorage right in the centre of the British ships, 
and the interest of the officers was keenly stirred in 
the strange craft, the like of which they had never 
seen before. It was still more keenly stirred when they 
heard the details of the adventurous voyage and its 
object from the accomplished and highly-educated 
gentleman, able to speak and write equally well in 
Latin and French, whom they discovered in the 
apparently poor, ragged, half -starved fisherman. 
Chinese officials at that time and for many years 
afterwards entertained a wholesome respect for the 
civil and naval representatives of Great Britain, and 
when they found that the protection both of the 
British Consul at Shanghai and of the naval officers 
was given to the destitute Korean they interfered 
with him no more. It was a long cry to Korea. The 



276 THE STORY OF KOREA 

prospect of ever being called upon to answer for 
any failure to discharge their treaty obligations to 
that country was remote. The British, who insisted 
on the humane treatment of sailors in distress, were 
present and active. It was best to choose the least 
of two evils ; and Kim, landed at Shanghai by British 
officers in one of their own boats, and there taken 
into the care of the British Consul, was allowed to 
repair and re -provision his boat, all the funds he 
required, both for these purposes and to discharge 
his obligation to the Cantonese sailor* who had towed 
him, being provided by the Roman Catholic mission 
in Shanghai. 

Kim had his reward. Ferreol hastened from 
Macao to Shanghai, and his first act was to ordain 
Kim to the priesthood, to consecrate the first native- 
born priest of Korea. It was on Sunday, August 17, 
1845, that the ceremony was performed, and in 
another fortnight everything was ready. The return 
voyage to Korea was begun, but this time Ferreol 
and Daveluy, who were embarked with great secrecy 
in the darkness of night, shared its dangers. Ferreol, 
in one of his subsequent letters, described the boat : 

" She was twenty-five feet long, nine feet wide, seven feet deep. 
Not a nail had been used in building her ; only pegs held the boards 
together : there was no tar, no caulking, the Koreans being ignorant 
of all these improvements. To two masts of an immoderate height 
were fastened two sails of straw mats, badly sewn together. The fore 
part of the boat, occupying a third of its entire length, was open as 
far as the hold. It was there that the capstan was placed, surrounded 
with a thick rope made of plaited grass, half rotten, which was 
covered with fungus in wet weather. At the end of this rope was 
bound an anchor of wood, our hope of safety. The deck was formed 
partly of mats, partly of boards laid side by side without fastenings 
of any kind. Add to that three openings from the deck into the 
cabin in the stern. When it rained or when the waves broke over 
the bulwarks, not a drop of water was lost. It had to be received 
on the back and then jerked off on one's arms." 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 277 

It was on September i, 1845, that they sailed in 
this frail craft. On October 12th they succeeded 
in landing on a lonely island, and thence, disguised 
in mourning, both priests made their way into the 
country, Ferreol proceeding to the capital. The 
brave and faithful Kim was soon added to the list of 
martyrs. Within less than a year from his return 
to his native land he was detected in communication 
with the Chinese fishermen who annually visited 
the coast of Korea. They were never permitted to 
land, and any Korean who communicated with them 
on sea was punished with death. Kim tried to induce 
them to give passages to new missionaries. He was 
seen and arrested, and on his trial it was disclosed 
that he was a Christian. He gloried in it before 
the judges, refused all inducements to recant, and 
then, after the usual torture, he was executed on 
September 16, 1846, " as an enemy to the State," in 
the same way as had been the three European priests. 

When the French frigates made their ill-fated visit 1 
to the Korean coast in 1846 they brought with them 
Pere Maistre and a young Korean named Tsoi, the 
second of the three proselytes who had been study- 
ing for the priesthood at Macao. Both hoped that 
they would be able to enter Korea, if not openly under 
the aegis of the French flag, secretly during the 
frigates' stay on the coast. The wreck and the subse- 
quent close surveillance to which all the crews were 
subjected spoiled their hopes, and they were obliged 
to return to Shanghai with the rest. They wanted 
to, remain at all hazards, but the French Commandant 
refused to be party to the inevitable perils to which 
they would be exposed. Tsoi had given his services 
as interpreter to the French officers in all their 
negotiations with the Koreans, not openly as a 
Korean, but disguised as a Chinaman, unable to speak 

1 Vide p. 226, 



278 THE STORY OF KOREA 

or understand the Korean language but able to com- 
municate in the ideographs which form the common 
system of writing of both countries. The position 
was an interesting one. Facing the Koreans was 
the young fugitive yearning after a long absence 
to speak in his own language once more, but not 
daring to expose himself to certain detection, to the 
ruin of all his hopes, by uttering a single word ; 
listening to the discussions which took place between 
the officials before they replied to the French officers 
and maintaining the appearance of ignorance until they 
had put what they thought proper in writing ; writing, 
in his turn, replies that were ready on the tip of his 
tongue for verbal expression ; anxious with a sickening 
longing for news of his fellow-Christians, both of the 
priests and of his own countrymen, yet not daring to 
put a single direct question in regard to them. At 
last he did ask one officer if there were any Christians 
remaining in Korea, and if the King still persecuted 
them. " Yes," was the reply, " we are determined 
to make an end of this wretched sect and to put all 
Christians whom we can find to death.' ' Once he 
found a native Christian by tracing on the palm of 
his hand the Chinese ideographs for Jesus and Mary 
and, though the presence and watchfulness of other 
Koreans prevented any but the most guarded con- 
versation, he hoped through this convert to find the 
means of getting away from the island in which he 
was interned with the shipwrecked Frenchmen and 
reaching the main land. But the convert never 
appeared again, and the vigilance of the guards 
around the island both by night and by day rendered 
further communication impossible. 

It was not till five years after their arrival that 
Ferreol and Daveluy were joined by Maistre, who 
at last succeeded in landing in the south from a 
Chinese junk, and for three more years these three 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 279 

missionaries carried on their work in the midst of 
the same dangers and privations that were suffered 
by their martyred predecessors. Then Ferreol died, 
no less a martyr than they, though not by the execu- 
tioner's sword. Maistre died in 1857, but now that 
the way to Korea by sea had been successfully ex- 
ploited, the places of those who died were more than 
filled by new workers. Simeon Francis Berneux was 
consecrated bishop in place of Ferreol, and with two 
priests, Michel Alexandre Petitnicholas and Charles 
Antoine Pourthie, also succeeded in landing from a 
Chinese junk about forty-five miles from the capital. 
They were afterwards followed by other priests, 
Feron, Aumaitre, Bretenieres, Dorie, Landre, Joano, 
Ridel, Calais, Beaulieu, and Huin. In the year 1859 
there were 16,700 Christians, and from that year 
onw r ard till 1866 their number steadily increased, 
the priests working among them, always in secrecy 
and disguise, their presence not unknown but winked 
at by the authorities. It was not from the authorities 
that priests and converts now suffered. The sword 
of the executioner was no longer busy, but both 
priests and converts were regarded by the native 
heathen with " satanic hatred/' and the local persecu- 
tions of isolated Christian communities, instituted and 
carried out, not by the officials but by ordinary 
citizens, were hardly less bitter to bear than the 
more fatal methods of the Government in former 
days. 

Events outside Korea wakened the minds of her 
Governors to the fact that it might not always be 
prudent to torture or murder Europeans found within 
her jurisdiction, even though their presence and 
objects were contrary to the national law. Peking* 
was taken by the allies, and the Emperor of China 
was compelled to seek safety in an ignominious flight ; 
his great summer palace, the splendour of which was 



280 THE STORY OF KOREA 

famed in Korea, was ruthlessly sacked ; and peace 
was purchased by him with a heavy indemnity and 
the grant of full liberties to Christianity throughout 
all his Empire. Russia tricked the humiliated and 
crushed Emperor into the cession of the great Usuri 
territory in the east of Asia and was now Korea's 
imtoediate neighbour on her north-east frontier ; and 
all three powers, Britain, France, and Russia, were 
giving signs, unmistakable to the Korean embassies 
at Peking, signs still more unmistakable from the 
occasional cruises of their warships on Korean coasts, 
that, if cause were given them, they would not be 
unready to deal with the vassal kingdom as they 
had done with the suzerain Empire. 

In 1863, the King died. As is told in another 
chapter, he was succeeded by a boy who was under 
the control of his grandmother as Regent. She was 
soon replaced in that office by the new King's father, 
the Tai Won Kun, and the party in the State which 
had from the first shown itself most hostile to 
Christians, which was mainly responsible for the 
persecution of 1801, again came into power. The 
Tai Won Kun was not unfavourably disposed 
towards either the missionaries who he knew were 
in the country or their religion, and had even in- 
directly sounded the Bishop as to the influence he 
could possibly exercise to prevent the Russians in- 
sisting on the demand which they had made to open 
commercial relations with Korea, promising that if 
he succeeded religious liberty would be accorded as 
his reward. On the other hand, petitions flowed in on 
the new Government, in which it was urged to revert 
to the purity of ancient customs and to destroy the 
Christian religion to its very roots. Drought, followed 
by excessive rain and violent autumnal storms, des- 
troyed the harvest and caused a famine in the winter 
of 1865, and heretofore famine had always increased 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 281 

the hatred to the Christians, whose " pernicious 
doctrine " was supposed to have contributed to the 
ills of the country, and who, when want came, were 
always fair subjects for plunder and spoliation. Still 
all went well. Conversions increased in the provinces, 
even among the rough and uncouth inhabitants of 
the north ; the priests went their rounds throughout 
the whole country without interference, and in a few 
instances openly celebrated the Sacraments. But the 
warning whispers of the coming tempest were audible, 
and with all their realised triumphs the hopes of 
the missionaries were smothered in uneasiness 
when they thought of what 1866 might bring in its 
train. Their worst anticipations were more than 
realised. 

In January a Russian warship appeared at Gensan, 
and the commander presented a letter in which liberty 
of trade and residence was imperatively demanded 
for Russian merchants. It also intimated that if 
the demand was not granted Russian troops would 
cross the frontier to enforce it. The reply was that 
Korea was a vassal of China, and could enter into 
no relations with any other nation without the 
Emperor's permission, but that an extraordinary 
ambassador would be immediately sent to Peking 
to inquire as to his wishes. Court and Ministry were 
deeply moved by this event, and while their perplexity 
was at its height some Christian nobles of Seoul, not 
in other respects very earnest in their religion, but 
members of families that had fallen in the previous 
persecutions, thought they saw an opportunity of 
winning liberty for their co-religionists and fame and 
honour for themselves. They concocted a letter to 
the Regent in which they urged that the only means 
of resisting Russian aggression were to be found in 
an alliance with France and England, and that such 
an alliance could easily be made through the good 



282 THE STORY OF KOREA 

offices of the French Bishop in Korea. The letter, 
drawn up with the want of tact that is natural to 
ill-informed people, was at first received favourably 
by the Regent, and for a time it was thought that 
Christianity would be freed, and the Christians, 
" drunk with joy/' spoke of building in Seoul a 
cathedral worthy of the capital. Their joy was short- 
lived. The dominant party at Court was still bitterly 
hostile, and time and time again had urged the issue 
of new prohibitory edicts. Nothing was, they 
now said, to be feared from the Russians. Their 
warship was gone, and their troops had not crossed 
the frontier : — 

"On the other hand, the Korean embassy, which had left for 
Peking in December, 1865, had just sent a letter in which it was said 
that the Chinese were putting the Europeans who were scattered 
through the country to death. This letter reached Seoul towards the 
end of January. It was like oil thrown on fire. The four principal 
ministers loudly voiced their disapproval of the Regent's behaviour to 
the Bishop. " Hatred to the Europeans ! " they cried. " No alliance 
with them or our kingdom will be done for. Death to all the 
Western savages ! Death to all Christians ! " The Regent reminded 
them of the Franco- British expedition to China, of the danger to 
which such behaviour would expose them, of the possible invasion 
of Korea. "No," was the answer, "such fears are idle; have we 
not already killed several of these Europeans ? Who has ever 
attempted to revenge their death ? What harm has it done us ? " 
This allusion was to the deaths of Imbert, Maubant, and Chastan, 
martyred in 1839, perhaps also to those who, shipwrecked at different 
times on the shores of Korea, had been pitilessly massacred. The 
Regent was alone in his opinion. Whether he was convinced by 
their reasoning or, led by their fanaticism, was forced to yield to 
the torrent in order not to risk his own authority or compromise 
his position, will only be known later when the missionaries have 
re-entered Korea and have been able to make complete inquiries as 
to what happened at that time. Whatever may have been his 
reason, he gave in, and signed the death-warrant of all the bishops 
and European priests and put into vigorous practice the laws against 
Christians." 




o 



fa 
o 

H 

« 
P 

O 

o 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 283 

On the afternoon of February 23rd a large force 
of police suddenly entered the Bishop's resi- 
dence and arrested him and six native Christians. 
The Bishop was at first placed in the common gaol, 
where he had thieves and murderers for his fellow- 
prisoners, but on the morrow he was transferred 
to the State prison, where he was placed in the quarter 
reserved for prisoners condemned to death. The 
prison had a curious feature. All the prisoners were 
in separate cells, and to prevent men speaking to 
each other across the partitions, little bells suspended 
all round were continually rung in such a manner as 
to render all conversation impossible. 

On the 26th he was brought before the High 
Court, composed of all the ministers. There, firmly 
fastened in a chair, his legs bared, his ankles, knees, 
and arms all bound so that movement was impossible, 
he was interrogated. " Why do you come to this 
country? " " To save souls." " How long have you 
been here? " " Ten years." " If you are released 
and ordered to quit the country, will you obey? " 
44 Not unless expelled by force." " Will you 
apostatise? ' : " No ; I have come to preach the 
religion which saves souls, and you propose that I 
renounce it ! " " If you do not obey, you will be 
beaten and tortured." "Do as you wish — enough 
of vain questions." 

Then his feet were bastinadoed, and he was beaten 
till the bones of his legs were denuded of flesh, and 
his whole body became one sore, and similar tortures 
were renewed on subsequent days. Bretenieres, 
Beaulieu, and Dorie were also arrested and were 
placed in the same State prison as the Bishop, but no 
one knew of the presence of the others. All three 
underwent the same tortures as the Bishop. When 
the torture was over and sentence of death was pro- 
nounced, all were conducted to the common prison, 



284 THE STORY OF KOREA 

where they met for the first time since their arrest. 
On March 8th they were brought to the execution 
ground, to the ground on the river bank which was 
only used when it was desired to carry out the 
sentence with the utmost publicity, and there all were 
done to death in precisely the same manner as their 
predecessors in 1839. Dorie was the last to suffer. 
He had to witness the agonies of all the others before 
his own turn came. 

The first four victims were arrested in or near the 
capital. The hue and cry was soon set in motion 
against those in the provinces, and Pourthie, Petit - 
nicolas, Daveluy, Huin, and Aumaitre were all 
arrested in turn and carried as prisoners amidst the 
jeers and insults of the people in every town and 
village through which they passed to the capital, 
where they were tried and condemned with the same 
tortures as the first. Daveluy, who was the Co- 
adjutor-Bishop, Huin, and Aumaitre were the last 
victims. The celebration of the young King's 
marriage was near at hand. Sorcerers and diviners 
were busy at the palace in selecting an auspicious 
day for the ceremony, and it was feared that torture 
and execution in the capital would bode ill for the 
royal nuptials. So the last three were taken to the 
coast, seventy-five miles south of the capital, and 
there on March 30th, which happened to be Good 
Friday, the sentence was carried out. In the case 
of Daveluy the execution was particularly barbarous. 
One stroke of the sword was given which caused a 
terrible wound. Then, while the victim was quiver- 
ing in agony, the executioner delayed to squabble 
with the officers as to his payment, and it was only 
after a long wrangle that he completed his work. 

Along with the missionaries the converts had their 
full meed of suffering. They were vigorously sought 
for in every province. Many were executed ; their 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 285 

number is not known, and possibly never will be 
known ; others were banished, imprisoned, and 
plundered. All Christian books and furniture were 
destroyed, and, paralysed with terror, broken, 
scattered, deprived of their pastors as in 1839, those 
who escaped arrest found their only safety in hiding 
themselves or their religion. Christianity was in 
1886 as completely extirpated in Korea as it hjad 
been in Japan in the second quarter of the seventeenth 
century. And all this happened within a few weeks. 
On February 1 5th bright hopes were held that the 
dawn of religious liberty was about to break. On 
March 30th the ruin of Christianity was complete. 
The officials were not wholly nor universally merciless, 
though mercy to any prisoners was not a Korean 
quality. The priests could have avoided their fate had 
they consented to leave the country. The converts 
were given every opportunity to recant. As had 
happened in Japan, so also in Korea pious frauds 
were practised, and prisoners' words were twisted so 
as to give them the sense of recantation, when the 
utterers had no such intention. Sometimes the 
prisoner's hand was forcibly made to trace a 
semblance of a signature to a written acknowledg- 
ment of his errors, and some magistrates who, though 
not Christians themselves, disapproved of the perse- 
cution, made both their search and interrogations as 
perfunctory as they could with safety to themselves . 

Three missionaries — Feron, Ridel, and Calais — 
remained alive. It was well known that there had 
been twelve priests in Korea besides the Bishop : 
it was suspected that there were others, and only 
nine had fallen. Orders were sent to all the pro- 
vincial authorities to make the most rigorous search, 
great rewards were promised them, and every week 
their zeal was stimulated by fresh instructions. 
Military posts were established at all cross-roads, 



286 THE STORY OF KOREA 

and the soldiers were ordered to permit none to pass 
unless after a strict examination, but " the soldiers 
soon wearied of this troublesome duty, and except 
in the neighbourhood of the capital took themselves 
off and left the watch to their empty sentry-boxes " ! 
The three European fugitives were driven from place 
to place by police and spies. During the day they 
hid in holes in walls or among the rocks of the most 
inaccessible mountains. At night they travelled by 
deserted by-paths, all the time their hearts torn with 
anguish at the ruin of their Christians, the dis- 
couragement of new converts, and apostasy of the 
weak. They had many narrow escapes in which they 
were saved from arrest, sometimes by the ingenuity 
of the converts, sometimes by what appeared to be 
the direct intervention of Providence. Throughout all 
they had one great consolation. No thought of their 
betrayal ever entered the minds of their converts. 
They were faithfully guided in all their wanderings, 
and the poorest owner of the poorest cabin in which 
they were hidden or lodged was never tempted by 
the great rewards that were offered for their arrest. 
Once Ridel and Feron lodged for two months in the 
house of a poor widow, in a wretched hamlet, who 
had six children to support, and the Christians of the 
village, all equally poor, sold all that they had to 
procure food for them. They had still no wish to 
leave Korea, but they decided that one of them should 
endeavour to carry the news of what had happened 
to China, and Ridel was chosen for the task. 
Christians provided a boat, manned by eleven sailors, 
and in this he safely reached Chefoo, after a voyage 
only less perilous than that of Kim ten years before. 
Thence he went to Tientsin, where he saw Admiral 
Roze, the Commander of the French Fleet on the 
China Station, to whom he told all that had occurred 
in Korea, and a few months later the French expedi- 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 287 

tion the story of which is told in another chapter 
made its vain essay to avenge the martyred mis- 
sionaries and to secure safety for the future. 

The Regent seemed to be drunk with vanity and 
cruelty. A courier came from Peking with warn- 
ings of the danger he incurred by slaying European 
priests, but he haughtily answered that he had killed 
foreigners before, that it was his right to do so, and 
that it concerned no one but himself. Even the 
Chinese were not spared, and the crews of two junks 
on the coast which were searched to see if Europeans 
were on board were all massacred because some 
cotton goods of European manufacture were found 
among their cargoes. New edicts were issued against 
the Christians, and death was prescribed for them 
and their relatives down to the sixth degree. The 
terms of the edicts were carried out to the fullest 
extent. The executioners were busy everywhere. 
Some of the martyrs took their last glimpse of life 
on the banks of the River Han, where two French 
ships had anchored a month previously. " It was 
on account of the Christians that the barbarians came 
there — it was owing to them that the waters of the 
river had been sullied by the ships of the West. 
It was necessary that the stain should be washed 
away with Christian blood/' 

When two French ships that were the forerunners 
of the invading fleet were making their first 
reconnaisance on the coast, the two priests, who re- 
mained when Ridel left and were still leading - the 
lives of hunted fugitives, always in imminent danger 
of arrest, made endeavours to reach the coast, but 
when they did so the ships had gone. They heard 
also, when hidden in the mountains, of the presence 
of the Roma, the vessel which carried Oppert on 
his second endeavour to find the entrance to the 
River Han. When Oppert was on shore his 



288 THE STORY OF KOREA 

attention was attracted by two poor -looking natives, 
who, when they caught his eye, made surrepti- 
tious signs of the cross. On his approaching them 
one of them slipped into his hands a paper on which 
was written the words : 

" Ego Phillipus alumnus coreensis secumdum pactum cum duobus 
nautis heri ante mediam noctem veni in hunc destinatum locum 
et tota nocte hie vigilavimus. In hac nocte post tenebras navicula 
veniret optimum erit nunc etiam hie sumus." l 

They were messengers from the fugitive priests 
in the hills. Oppert waited for them at night, but 
they did not appear again, and it is probable that 
they were seen communicating with him and arrested. 

Failing to find succour either in the warships of 
their own country or from the German adventurer, 
their position daily becoming more desperate, and 
the danger to their devoted converts who sheltered 
them more intensified, the priests resolved to risk 
again the dangers of the sea, and they embarked in 
a frail, open boat on the very day on which Admiral 
Roze sailed from Chefoo on his great expedition. 2 
They might have met his fleet on the way, but an 
unfavourable wind drove them to the north, out of 
the ordinary course from China, and as their boat 
was unfitted, both in its size and construction, for 
the high seas, they were fortunate in falling in with 
some Chinese smugglers, by whom they were brought 
in safety to Chefoo, where they arrived on 
October 26th, having been in all on the sea for 
fourteen days. Korea was then once more without 
the help of a single foreign priest. The escaped 
missionaries remained in China, always hoping that 
the chance would be given to them of returning to 

1 Oppert, " A Forbidden Land." 

2 Vide p. 235. 






PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 289 

the field which, with all they had suffered in it, they 
still loved. It was thought that, if the French would 
not endeavour to wipe out the discredit of their first 
abortive attempt by another expedition, this time with 
a sufficient force, the English would do so in order 
to re-establish European prestige in the Far East, 
now sadly smirched by the French defeat. But 
neither French nor English did anything. Hopes 
were again raised when the United States fleet en- 
deavoured to open the closed doors in 1871, but 
the United States attempt when it came was as 
abortive as the French. 

Korea was left to herself. The Regent, bursting 
with pride at having driven back with little cost 
the Europeans before whom the capital of his mighty 
suzerain had ignominiously fallen, drew still more 
closely the barriers which closed his country against 
all the world, and haughtily proclaimed that who- 
soever even suggested the least relaxation of the time- 
honoured policy would be dealt with as a traitor. 
And as for the Christians they were held to be already 
traitors, false to their country as well as to their 
religion. All their property was confiscated, and 
the zeal of spies and renegades was stimulated by 
the promise of sharing in the spoils. They were 
proscribed as rebels, to be arrested and dragged to 
prison wherever found and there strangled at once 
without the formality of preliminary trial. In 
previous persecutions the unhappy victims were able 
to find refuge by emigrating to other provinces. Now 
they were forbidden to settle in new districts with- 
out licence from the local magistrates, and the 
licence was only issued after a rigorous examina- 
tion as to their motives. Orphans, whose parents 
had been martyred, were entrusted to heathen 
families, who were told to rear them in hatred of 
the Christianity which made them orphans. These 

19 



290 THE STORY OF KOREA 

were the fortunate ones. Others were cast on the 
highways to die of cold and hunger as the brood 
of an accursed sect. Executions were always carried 
out in the presence of those who were to suffer later 
so as to add to their terror. Formerly those who 
apostatised were released, and the officials, as has 
been told, endeavoured to construe apostasy from 
words that conveyed no such intention. Now even 
those who, in the agonies of torture, uttered some 
words that bore the meaning were straightway carried 
from the court and beheaded. The only result of 
their weakness was that they were saved from further 
torture. The swords of the executioners were in- 
sufficient for the work they had to do, and a guillotine 
was devised by which twenty-five heads could be 
separated from the bodies at one stroke. Between 
1866 and 1870 there were more than eight thousand 
Christian martyrs, apart from those who perished 
of cold and hunger in the barren mountains to which 
they fled. Deprived of its priests, of every native 
whose social position, intelligence, or wealth could 
have encouraged or helped its poorer members, the 
Church was dead, and Christianity extirpated in 
Korea, even before the United States guns were heard 
on its shores. All hopes of its revival were at an 
end when those guns were silenced. 

The story of the Church in Japan, three hundred 
years older than that of the Church in Korea, as told 
by the present writer, 1 was taken to a large extent 
from the " History of the Church of Japan," compiled 
from the letters of the Jesuit priests who were the 
first missionaries. The present story of that in Korea 
has been taken to a still larger extent, almost entirely^ 
from the later " Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree," com- 
piled by Pere Dallet, from the letters and reports 
of the French missionaries who sacrificed their lives 
1 Vide " The Story of Old Japan." 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 291 

in Korea. The latter work, which is full of detail of 
the lives and sufferings of individuals, both French 
and Korean, is contained in two bulky volumes, each 
of just under six hundred closely printed pages. The 
writer has endeavoured to include in his story the 
salient points in the history of over one hundred 
and twenty years, and to provide his readers with 
a connected outline of one of the most harrowinig 
chapters in the whole history of Christianity. Those 
in whom the story, as the writer has tried to tell 
it in the limits of space at his disposal, may arouse 
the desire for further information can only be re- 
ferred to Dallet's eloquent and thrilling pages. They 
form as yet the only material that is available for 
our knowledge of the whole subject. 

In Japan, on the other hand, we have not only 
the writings of the Jesuits as our authorities, but 
all the results of the researches in native histories 
and records of the great English savants, whose pro- 
found scholarship is one of the brightest spots in 
the record of what Englishmen have done in or for 
Japan. All their researches have served to confirm 
what is told by the Jesuits and to prove that what 
they have said is disfigured neither by serious ex- 
aggeration nor misrepresentation. Thirty years have 
now passed since European relations began with 
Korea. An American scholar has compiled from 
the native authorities an exhaustive history of the 
country from the mythical down to the present age, 
which bears in its internal evidence every mark of 
reliability and accuracy from which we have largely 
borrowed in the previous chapters. An English mis- 
sionary has produced a great dictionary of the 
language. But it would be idle to say that Korea 
has as yet had its Satow, Aston, or Chamberlain. 
Time will, no doubt, bring them ; but in the interim 
may we not lend to the writings of the French mis- 



292 THE STORY OF KOREA 

sionaries the same credit that has been proved to 
be justly due to their Jesuit predecessors in Japan, 
and accept what is told by them as the authentic 
history of a missionary enterprise that is unsurpassed 
in the sublime fortitude and heroism of its pioneers 
by any that has ever been seen in other ages or 
quarters of the world? 

The story of Korea's opening to the world will be 
told in another chapter. Even before the French 
treaty was concluded two French priests once more 
made their way to the capital. They were taken 
under the protection of the Japanese minister, but 
even his presence, even the certainty that whatever 
happened would be promptly known to the outer 
world, did not prevent their position being full of 
danger, so much so that the minister felt it his 
duty to advise them to leave, advice which, under 
the circumstances, became a command.. They were 
soon able to return. Within a few years all 
the great European Powers interested in the Far 
East had their treaties duly signed and rati- 
fied, under which their citizens had the rights 
of trade and residence in Korea, and the practice 
of their religion was free. Missionaries at once 
flocked there, the French Roman Catholics in the 
van, quickly followed from England, America, Canada, 
and Australia by Protestants of all the varied denomi- 
nations whose exegetic controversies are a source of 
bewilderment to the simple-minded native seeker for 
the Gospel of Christ. Prelatists and Presbyterians, 
Baptists and Methodists, the Salvation Army, the 
Young Men's Christian Association, and perhaps a 
score of others, have now their representative missions 
in Korea, and all claim success in their proselytising. 
In 1899 there were twenty thousand Protestant con- 
verts. Ten years later their number had increased 
fourfold, and the pride of the missionaries was not 




o 
o 

X 
o 

en 

W 

o 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 293 

in the number but " in the supreme faith and apos- 
tolic fervour " of their converts. When the annexa- 
tion was proclaimed there were 453 missionaries in 
Korea. Fifty of them were French citizens, and 
they included all the Roman Catholics. Four were 
Russians of the Greek Church. The rest, of whom 
306 were United States citizens, 90 British, and 3 
German subjects, comprised the Protestant mis- 
sionaries of all denominations. There are said to 
be over 200,000 native Christians of all denomina- 
tions, the greatest number belonging, as is natural 
from its greater age in Korea, to the Roman Catholic 
Church. Next to it in number of its followers comes 
the Greek Church, while among the Protestant 
Churches the foremost places are taken by the 
Presbyterians and Methodists. In every province, 
in every great city throughout the whole peninsula, 
missionaries are found working ; churches, rising 
high above the low roofs of the native houses, are 
prominent features in the towns, and all are well 
filled by worshippers on Sundays and holidays. The 
most striking architectural feature in the capital is 
perhaps the imposing Roman Catholic cathedral 
which in late years has more than realised the 
brightest hopes of the simple converts of 1866. At 
Kang-Wha, the historic island in which the kings 
of Old Korea were wont to seek a harbour of refuge 
in times of danger, there is a great Church of 
England mission, presided over by a bishop, with 
all the equipment of brothers and sisters of the most 
advanced ritualistic school. At Phyong An, " the 
most wicked city in all Korea," the ancient capital, 
a large number of American missionaries reside, and 
the Presbyterian Church alone has a regular Sunday 
congregation of over fifteen hundred converts, while 
its mid-week prayer-meeting has an average attend- 
ance of eleven hundred. Is there any single church 



294 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in all England or Scotland that can boast of a similar 
mid-week congregation ? 

By leading lives of a degree of self-denying 
poverty that borders on asceticism, by condemning 
themselves to lifelong expatriation, which is never re- 
lieved by furloughs in Europe, the Roman Catholics, 
both priests and nuns, still endeavour to follow the 
example of their martyred predecessors ; the English 
Ritualists follow at some distance the example of 
their Roman Catholic confreres by the exercise of 
strict frugality ; the Nonconformists, with their wives 
and children around them, lead the same lives as the 
pastors of their own Churches in their own country. 
Missionaries, whether Catholic or Protestant, no 
longer steal at night through drain -pipes, nor cross 
the dangerous China Seas in open boats, but take 
their passages in ocean steamers as well found as 
any in the world. They have not to live as solitary 
fugitives in peasant cabins, dependent on their poor 
owners for food and safety, but in their own spacious 
European houses, built on sites that are carefully 
chosen, both for their sanitary and picturesque 
advantages, furnished with every domestic appliance 
that can moderate the heat of summer and the cold 
of winter. They no longer make their weary journeys 
on foot hidden beneath the stifling garb of the 
mourning native, but in express trains, fitted with 
dining and sleeping cars and all that is required to 
make railway travelling easy, or, where railways are 
not available, in chairs or on horseback, with an 
attendant train of obsequious baggage coolies, carry- 
ing ample provision of food, clothing, and bedding. 
Their converts have now nothing to fear. They had, 
on the contrary, much to gain in the help that was 
afforded to them by their pastors against the tyranny 
of their own officials prior to the beginning of the 
Japanese Protectorate. Their faith has not been tried 



PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION 295 

in the fires of persecution that purified that of their 
fathers and grandfathers. Still, it would be unfair 
to doubt it, any more than do those missionaries who 
know tliem ; and if the numbers of the professed 
converts and their willingness to contribute out of 
their own most scanty means to the support of their 
Churches are tests of success, the missionaries of 
the present day have nothing to fear from a com- 
parison of the results of their zeal, industry, ability, 
and devotion with those of their martyred prede- 
cessors. 

The late Prince Ito was not a believer in 
Christianity, either in its doctrine or as a means 
for the betterment of his own countrymen. He once, 
many years ago, told the present writer that he 
wanted everything from the West except its religion, 
but that he could see nothing that would tend to the 
moral amelioration of humanity, either in the doctrine 
or the practices of Christianity, which Japanese would 
not find equally well in their own faith and moral 
codes and observances. And yet, when Resident- 
General at Seoul, he paid a high compliment to the 
religious and educational work of European mis- 
sionaries in Korea, promising them that his own 
Government would give every assistance to their 
efforts, and inviting their co-operation in promoting 
the future welfare of the people. He was not a 
man either to give praise where it was not deserved, 
or to invoke aid which might be fruitless, and no 
higher certificate could possibly be given to the 
efficiency of missionary work in Korea than in his 
words, the purport of which we have taken from a 
Japanese and not from a missionary authority. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MODERN KOREA — I 868-84 

In 1868 the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the 
dynasty which had governed Japan for more than 
two and a half centuries, resigned his great office, 
and the direct control of the executive reverted into 
the hands of the Emperor, who thus resumed the 
full prerogatives of the sovereignty of which his 
ancestors had been deprived by successive families 
of military usurpers for more than seven centuries. 
A complete revolution simultaneously took place in 
the whole administrative and social systems of Japan. 
Feudalism was abolished, and the resolution was 
taken by the new Government to substitute the 
civilisation of Europe for that of China as the con- 
trolling factor in the social and political life of the 
nation. 

It has been already told how the Japanese factory 
was maintained at Fusan, and a tribute -bearing 
embassy sent by Korea each year, at first, in the 
earlier years of the Tokugawas, to Yedo, and after- 
wards in the later years to Tsushima. Korea acknow- 
ledged vassalage to both China and Japan ; but while 
the Koreans paid infinitely more deference and 
observed their vassal obligations with far greater 
punctiliousness to China, accepting from China in- 
structions as to the succession of their kings, their 
laws, and their calendar which they would not have 
done from Japan, Japan always claimed that her rights 
towards Korea were earlier in origin, and rested on 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 297 

a better foundation than those of China. During 
the civil war which preceded the restoration of the 
Emperor Korea was forgotten, and even the embassy 
to Tsushima lapsed. Once, however, the war was 
over and the Emperor was firmly established on his 
throne in his new capital at Tokio, the precedent 
set by Iyeyasu two hundred and fifty years pre- 
viously was followed, and an intimation of what had 
taken place was sent to the Korean Government, 
accompanied by an invitation to renew the old 
observances. The Tai Won Kun was at this time 
at the very height of his influence and power as 
Regent of the kingdom. He had just, as he believed, 
defeated the forces of France ; he had extirpated 
the hated doctrine of Christianity ; he considered 
himself and his country invincible, and he was 
saturated both with pride at what he had achieved 
and with the most bigoted conservative prejudices. 
For Japan, who had opened her doors to Europeans 
and was, he was told, now about to adopt their 
civilisation, he had nothing but contempt, and the 
reply which he sent to the courteous communica- 
tion from the new Government of the Empire con- 
veyed his contempt in the most insulting manner 
that could be embodied in words. It was as follows : 

" We have received your letter and have given it very deep 
consideration, comparing your dispatch with other dispatches. It 
is a long time since there has been any intercourse between our two 
countries. Your dispatch demands payment of tribute. We will 
show how this affair stands. Taiko Sama, 1 without provocation or 
cause of any kind, invaded Korea, and made Korea sign a document 
agreeing to pay tribute. In those days Korea was unprepared for 
war, and had not even been informed of the intention of Japan. 
But it is very different now. The invasion by Taiko was a crime 
committed against Korea by Japan, which is not yet punished. 
Your demand is so unreasonable, that instead of Korea paying you 



Hideyoshi. 



298 THE STORY OF KOREA 

tribute, it is for you to return the money paid by Korea. In your 
dispatch you have made many insinuations of your having adopted 
foreign customs ; we can assure you that Japan is Japan, Korea is 
Korea— but Korea has its own customs. Some years back we had 
a difference with a country called France, which is, among 
barbarians, considered to be very powerful and very large, whilst 
Korea is very small — but we defeated that great country. We 
assembled all our warriors, every one of whom was ready to die. 
According to our old treaty of friendship, whenever either is attacked 
by barbarians, the other is to help. To show our honesty, when the 
barbarians went to your country, we immediately wrote to you that 
we had made every preparation to help you. During the French 
attack on Korea we day and night expected that you would come 
with your forces to our aid ; but not having received your assistance 
we wrote and informed you of our distress, informing you of our 
position, and asking for immediate help. You have neither sent us 
aid, nor any answer to our dispatch. From that day our treaty of 
friendship was at an end. We no longer consider each other friends 
but enemies. The tone of your dispatch is so friendly that we look 
upon it as treachery ; and after having been so friendly with Japan 
and being repaid by treachery, we never can be friendly again. Not 
only have you broken the treaty as above described, but you have 
also broken another very chief point of treaty in adopting the 
manners and customs of the Western barbarians. Our information 
is, that you have adopted French drill ; and whenever you want 
money you go to England ; and if you wish to tax your own people 
or impose duties you take advice from America. But you have 
never consulted us, as agreed in our old treaty. You think the 
Western barbarians are great people. We, Koreans, are a very 
small country, but yet we have the courage to put in writing to you, 
that Western barbarians are beasts. The above we intend as a direct 
insult to you and your allies — the barbarians. We desire that you 
should join them and bring your great ships and your army here. 
Fusan is the nearest part of Korea to Japan. To make your attack 
as inexpensive as possible to you and your friends, we will send and 
clear Fusan for a battle-field, and will appoint the battle. It is use- 
less to go into any correspondence, because the wrong you have 
done to us is so great, that your apologies will not avail. The only 
alternative is a bloody war — a war that will cost Japan all its 
warriors ; and then we will bring you to terms. 

This is our intention. You must not attempt to write us again ; 
and the above is a notice to you to make all preparation, for either 
Japan must invade Korea, or Korea will invade Japan. 




MARBLE PAGODA IN SEOUL. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Under aood, London.) 



To face p. 298. 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 299 

The receipt of this letter was concealed by the 
Japanese Government, which was fully occupied at 
the time by its own serious domestic difficulties. It 
leaked out, however, two years later, and it was 
then asserted, and it is now believed, that the letter 
was a forgery ; but even if the version that has just 
been given is not correct, there is no doubt that the 
Tai Won Kun's reply embodied an insulting and con- 
temptuous refusal of the Japanese proposal. 

The high-spirited Samurai of Japan were plunged 
into a fervour of patriotic indignation when they 
heard of the insult offered to their Emperor by a 
petty kingdom which had been twice conquered by 
their ancestors, whose military capacity and civilisa- 
tion they regarded with equal contempt. They 
demanded that they should be at once led to Korea 
to wipe out the insult in blood, and several of the 
leading members of the new Government were in full 
sympathy with them. But wiser counsels prevailed. 
Japan was in no condition to undertake a foreign 
war, even against a power so insignificant and close 
as Korea. The foreign and domestic problems which 
her new Government had to solve were already 
sufficient to exhaust to the utmost the time and talents 
of her ministers, all of whom were new to their 
duties, without adding to them complications with 
Korea. Her finances had not recovered from the 
burthens of her own civil war. Her new military 
system was in its infancy and she had neither a naval 
nor a mercantile fleet. The affront was for the 
moment accepted and Korea was left alone. But 
it was only to await another and more fitting time. 

In September, 1875, the Unyo Kwan, a gunboat, 
was fired on by a Korean fort at the entrance of the 
River Han. It was stated at the time that the gun- 
boat had only called to obtain wood and water, while 
on a voyage from Nagasaki to New-chwang, but 



300 THE STORY OF KOREA 

she was in reality engaged in surveying the 
approaches to the Han in view of future contingencies. 
The insult to the flag was promptly returned. The 
fort was first shelled, and then stormed and taken 
by a landing party. The comparative fighting 
capacity of the Koreans and Japanese at the time 
may be estimated from the fact that the Korean 
garrison consisted of 250 men and the landing party 
of 32 officers and men. The Koreans had only bows 
and old matchlocks to oppose to the Japanese rifles 
of the most modern pattern, but, on the other hand, 
they were behind the walls of their castle, a position 
in which their foes have ever found them formidable 
antagonists, from the days of the Swi Emperors of 
China to those of the French and United States 
fiascoes. Nearly the whole garrison was killed, many 
as they tried to swim across the river that was near 
being drowned or shot by the Japanese, one of whose 
qualities was not mercy to beaten foes, as they 
struggled in the water. A great quantity of spoil 
was taken — matchlocks, drums (one of the drums was 
six feet in diameter), banners — and brought to Tokio, 
where it was publicly exhibited. 

Once more, as in 1872, the cry for war was raised 
in Japan by the hot-headed and ambitious Samurai, 
and as Japan was now in a very different position to 
what she had been in 1872, with a small but efficient 
army and the nucleus of a navy and mercantile 
marine, she could have safely undertaken to bring 
such a power as Korea to her own terms. The 
Government had, however, to consider not only Korea 
but her suzerain, China, who might, if the vassal 
were assailed, come to her assistance as in the days 
of Hideyoshi ; and with the wisdom and patience 
which the ministers of the Emperor have displayed 
in every incident of their foreign policy throughout 
his reign they disregarded the jingoism of a section 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 301 

of their citizens and resolved to endeavour to bring 
Korea to terms and induce her to abandon her policy 
of national isolation by diplomacy. Japan had other 
and more vital reasons to actuate her than the solace - 
ment of wounded pride. Russian aggression in the 
Far East was an ever-present nightmare to the 
Japanese statesmen throughout the first decades of 
the Emperor's reign. Russia had, in Japan's own 
case, when she was distracted by civil war and had 
not even the semblance of a navy, actually attempted 
to lay hands on the island of Tsushima, and v/as only 
prevented from carrying her designs further by the 
British fleet. Russia had also given evidence that 
in her lust of territory she did not consider the 
island of Yezo beyond the possibility of acquisition. 
She had profited by the weakness and ignorance of 
China to extend her continental possessions down 
to the very frontier of Korea, but she still wanted a 
sea outlet. To gain that, no duplicity, no use pf 
force that promised success would be spared. Korea, 
isolated, ignorant, and weak, with her splendid ice- 
free harbours, offered all and more than could be 
desired, and was a tempting morsel to the insatiable 
appetite of the Czar, too great a temptation to be 
resisted when the time came, unless Russia was 
assured that yielding to it would cost more than it 
was worth. Korea's fate was, on the other hand, 
of as vital importance to the future national security 
of Japan in the eyes of her statesmen as were, not 
to say Afghanistan and Egypt but Ireland to Great 
Britain. Her incorporation by a strong military and 
aggressive Western power would be as great a threat 
to the independence and national security of Japan 
as would Ireland, independent or under the influ- 
ence of a hostile power, be to the safety of the British 
Empire. Korea's security could only be insured by 
bringing her into the comity of the nations of the 



302 THE STORY OF KOREA 

world and inducing her to educate and arm herself 
according to modern methods, as Japan was now 
endeavouring to do. 

China was induced, not only to assent to the 
Japanese proposals but to advise Korea to accept 
them. She warned Korea to expect no military aid 
in any troubles that might ensue from resisting the 
Japanese demands. She cited her own example as 
a lesson. Great and powerful though China was, 
her Government had found it impossible to close 
their country against foreigners, and had, therefore, 
found protection by entering into friendly relations 
with them. How, then, could a poor and weak country 
like Korea expect to succeed where China had failed, 
and maintain its isolation against all the powers of 
the world, of whom Japan was only the forerunner? 
When it was known in Japan that Chinese neutrality 
could be relied on all preparations were quickly com- 
pleted, and in January, 1876, an expedition sailed 
for Kang-Wha, sufficiently strong, though its whole 
object was peaceful, to forcibly repel any insult or 
attack that might be offered to it by the Koreans. 
Japan in the result achieved a complete triumph, one 
that did much to enhance her reputation for firm 
and astute statesmanship in the eyes of the world. 
The narrow-minded, intolerant Regent of Korea was 
no longer in office. The young King had attained 
his majority, and with his personal assumption of the 
control of the executive, the conservative entourage 
of the Regent had been replaced by younger and 
more progressive officials. The demands formulated 
in courteous but unmistakable terms by the Japanese 
envoys were accepted by them, and on February 26, 
1876, a Treaty of "Peace and Friendship" was 
concluded, which terminated for ever, not only 
Korea's national isolation from the world but, 
theoretically at least, her dependence on China. The 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 303 

first clause of the treaty declared that Korea was 
an independent State, enjoying the same sovereign 
rights as Japan, and that all intercourse between the 
two should be conducted on terms of equality. 
Others provided for the abolition of the old factory 
at Fusan with its primeval restrictions, and the open- 
ing of Fusan and two other ports to the trade and 
residence of Japanese subjects ; for the rescue and 
treatment of shipwrecked crews ; for the appointment 
of Consuls at the ports, and for the establishment 
of a legation at the capital. The same extra-terri- 
torial clauses that Perry had forced on the Japanese 
when they were ignorant of all international usages, 
of which they afterwards so bitterly complained, were 
introduced by them into their first treaty with Korea, 
and it may be noted here that this was only the first 
of many incidents in Japan's intercourse with Korea 
that found their exact counterpart in the story of 
her own early relations with European Powers. 
Others will be mentioned hereafter. 

Two of the proposals of the Japanese were long 
resisted by the Koreans. For centuries the latter 
had been accustomed to use the Chinese calendar^ 
a usage which among Oriental nations was the 
strongest outward mark of vassalage. To depart 
from their old custom was an innovation which at first 
appeared too revolutionary to the Koreans, but they 
finally yielded and consented to date the treaty, not 
according to the Chinese style, which would have 
been totally inconsistent with the newly-asserted inde- 
pendence of Korea, but as the four hundred and 
eighty-fifth year from the founding of Chosen — in 
other words, from the accession of the first king of 
the last dynasty, when the name of Chosen was 
resurrected as that of the unified kingdom of the 
peninsula. 

The second difficulty occurred in regard to the 



304 THE STORY OF KOREA 

titles by which the respective sovereigns of the two 
countries should be described. 

The title by which the ruler of Korea had always 
been recognised by China was that of Wang 
(Japanese O), which means sovereign, or royal 
prince, and in very ancient times this was also the 
only title which was held even by the Emperor of 
China. In the feudal period of China, in the early 
centuries of the Christian era, every ruler of a fief 
assumed it, and the Emperor was then discriminated 
from mere feudal chiefs by the more high-sounding 
title Hwang Ti (Supreme Ruler), the ruler to whom 
not only his own subjects but all the sovereigns of 
other nations of the world are inferior. When the 
Japanese adopted the civilisation of China they 
also adopted as the designation of their Sovereign 
the term Kotei, which is the Japanese pronunciation 
of the ideographs that are read in Chinese as Hwang 
Ti, and of course conveys to the Japanese mind 
precisely the same signification as does Hwang Ti 
to the Chinese. The Japanese had precisely the 
same idea in adopting the title as that which actuated 
the Chinese. They thought that the Sovereign of 
Japan, the direct descendant of the Gods of Heaven, 
the supreme ruler of the divine Land of the Gods, 
was superior to all other sovereigns on earth. He 
alone could therefore be properly described as Kotei. 
This belief was put in practice when the first 
treaties were concluded both by China and Japan 
in the names of their Emperors with the great powers 
of the West. The two Emperors were described in 
them as Hwang Ti or Kotei, while the Queen of Great 
Britain and other European sovereigns were described 
as Wang or O, and these terms remained in the 
treaties until European diplomatists learnt their dero- 
gatory signification. The King of Korea, a vassal 
of China, had never claimed or received any higher 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 305 

title from his suzerain than that of Wang. He was 
too inured to that, too unconscious of the freedom 
from the shackles of Chinese suzerainty that was 
being thrust upon him, to desire another ; and yet 
he was now asked to treat on terms of equality, as an 
independent sovereign, with the Emperor of Japan, 
whom his representatives would describe in no other 
term than that of Kotei. The difficulty was got 
over after long discussion, which at first threatened 
to put a stop to all the negotiations, by the treaty 
being formulated in the names of the Governments 
and not, according to the usual international practice, 
in those of the sovereigns of the two countries. 

For a few years the Japanese were satisfied with 
their moral victory. They did not bring back with 
thern a high idea of the resources of Korea or pf 
any prospect of a valuable trade springing up between 
the two countries. In the few places they had seen 
they found signs of great poverty — -houses, food, and 
clothing all poor — and all the outward marks of a low 
order of civilisation, and the physical characteristics 
of the country impressed them as little as did the 
conditions of the people. The soil seemed to be poor, 
hard, and ill-suited for cultivation, the vegetation 
sparse and stunted, timber scarce, and what there 
was of it of inferior quality. Pines were plentiful, 
but they were not straight and graceful like those in 
Japan, and the demand for fuel was so great that 
the trees were never permitted to grow to a great 
height. The houses were constructed of stone and 
earth without plaster, thatched with rice straw, and 
miserably small. Few of them had ceilings, and the 
floors were made of hardened earth and covered only 
with oil-paper or, in the better-class houses, with 
leopard-skins. The streets were indescribably filthy. 
There was no sanitation, no drainage, and nothing 
seemed to be done to remove the accumulations of 

20 



306 THE STORY OF KOREA 

household refuse and ordure that were piled up all 
along the sides of even the best streets, rendering 
them equally offensive to sight and smell. Both 
art and manufactures were in a low state. The best 
pictures that Korean artists could produce might be 
purchased for a few pence in Japan ; the silk was 
useless ; the cotton, though cheap, of low quality, 
and all that the commercial experts of the expedition 
could see that gave hopes of profitable trade in the 
future were dried fish, seaweed, and hides. 

The Koreans sent a complimentary embassy to 
Tokio to return the visit which the Japanese envoys 
had made to Korea, and there they saw for the first 
time all the wonders of Western civilisation which 
Japan had acquired ; but, with that, official inter- 
course between the two countries came to a temporary 
end. The Satsuma rebellion broke out, and all the 
energy and thought of the Government of Japan 
were concentrated on its suppression and on the re- 
covery from the terrible sacrifice of men and money 
which it entailed on the nation. It was not till 
1880 that a minister was sent to take up his residence 
in Seoul, and the three ports provided in the treaty 
were opened and occupied by Japanese traders. 
Liberal opinions had, in the meantime, been steadily 
gaining ground among the ruling classes in Korea. 
Some of them had visited Japan, and the tales which 
they and the embassy brought back of all they had 
seen there filled the others with the desire to start 
Korea on the same path of progress. The King was 
with them. So also was the Queen, a strong-minded, 
courageous, and able woman, though her liberality 
was possibly the outcome of her hatred for the Taif 
Won Kun, who was still faithful to his old tenets, 
and still had a large and influential following in the 
country, rather than from any honest conversion to 
the cause of progress. Advice was coming from 




ROAD OUTSIDE SEOUL. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 306. 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 307 

Li Hung Chang, the great statesman of China, who 
had in the interim quietly absorbed and colonised 
the old strip of neutral territory on the northern 
frontier, which strongly supported the views of the 
Korean liberals, and when, in 1882 and 1883, repre- 
sentatives of the United States and Great Britain 
appeared at Chemulpo, due intimation of their coming 
having been first sent through the Government of 
China, treaties were also concluded with them. Other 
European powers — France, Germany, Russia, and 
Italy — followed, and Korea was finally and irre- 
trievably committed to diplomatic and commercial 
intercourse on equal terms with the despised bar- 
barians of the West. 

As it was in Japan in the first decade that 
followed her opening to the world so also was it in 
Korea. These chapters in the histories of both 
countries are almost identical. Liberal statesmen in 
Japan, yielding to the dictates of prudence which 
told them that they had no means to resist demands 
that would be enforced by overwhelming military 
strength, opened their country to foreigners, but by 
doing so they incurred the universal odium of their 
own ill-informed countrymen, and what they had done 
was bitterly condemned by conservative fanatics who 
thought themselves patriots, who enforced their views 
by frequent assassinations both of the ministers of 
their Government and of the first Europeans to reside 
in the country. In Japan in the early days of her! 
foreign intercourse desperate attacks were twice made 
by armed men at night on the British Legation in 
the capital with the avowed object of murdering all 
its inmates ; and so insecure were the lives of all 
Europeans that Great Britain and France, the two 
powers of the West that were then most deeply 
interested in the commercial expansion of the East, 
were obliged to establish strong garrisons of their 



308 THE STORY OF KOREA 

troops in Yokohama to render to their citizens the 
protection and security which the Japanese Govern- 
ment of the time could not give them. The only 
foreigners in the capital of Seoul in 1882 were 
Japanese, and they were limited to the ministers and 
a large staff which included, not only secretaries, 
student interpreters, and servants, but a few officers 
of the army, and some policemen who acted as ia 
guard, the whole numbering about forty-two persons. 
They had been in the capital for nearly two years ; and 
though they ha,d during those years frequently been 
subjected to the insults and jeers of the lower orders 
of the people when outside the walls of their Legation 
— just as were the staff of the English Legation in 
the streets of Yedo in the early sixties — they had, on 
the whole, somewhat reconciled the general mass of 
the population to their presence. 

The Tai Won Kun had been out of office pince 
1873. He had been obliged to witness impotently 
the changes that had taken place in the policy of his 
country, but had abated nothing of his old pre- 
judices nor his confidence that Korea could still hold 
her own against the barbarians of the West as she 
had done before. The new departure was hateful to 
him ; still more hateful to him was the Queen, who* 
was mainly responsible for this departure and who 
had brought it about, not from any patriotic sense 
of the welfare of the country, but as a lever for 
procuring the favour of the King and office for the 
members of her own family. His political adherents 
diligently spread his views among a large section 
of the people, and only a spark was required to 
kindle the flames that were ready to burst forth. 
A mutiny among the Korean troops who had been 
defrauded of their pay by a dishonest officer furnished 
the spark. For two months they had received neither 
pay nor rations. A liberal quantity of rice of the 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 309 

best quality was ordered to be distributed among 1 
them, but the commissariat officer charged with its 
distribution sold it and replaced it by a less quantity 
of rice of an inferior quality, and the deficiency 
in weight was made up by an admixture of sand. 
The infuriated troops broke from their barracks to 
vent their rage on the officer, whom they beat to death 
in his own house, and on the Government. From 
the soldiers the disorder spread to the people, and 
soon a mob of four thousand soldiers and men, mad 
with fanaticism and personal wrongs, was gathered, 
which proceeded to vent its fury on all the ministers 
of the Government who were thought to be favour- 
able to the new order of affairs. Even the palace 
was not spared. Instigated, no doubt, by the 
emissaries* of the Tai Won Kun, an attack was made 
on it, and the mob made their way into the apart- 
ments of the King and cut down in his presence some 
of his principal officials. They did not lay hands 
on the King himself, but they angrily demanded the 
Queen. She disappeared, and it was for some time 
thought that she had been murdered and her body 
carried away. 

When the riot broke out several Japanese, suspect- 
ing nothing, were as usual scattered throughout the 
streets. All who had the misfortune to meet the 
mob were killed at once, and in the afternoon, when 
the rioters had exhausted their fury against their 
own countrymen, they turned on the Legation and 
made a combined attack on it. For seven hours it 
was gallantly defended, and then the buildings were 
set on fire from the outside and the defenders were 
therefore forced to evacuate them. Forming into 
a wedge and keeping together, with their minister 
at their head, the small Japanese party held the 
great mob at bay with their swords and revolvers, 
and fought their way through the narrow streets, 



310 THE STORY OF KOREA 

all the time under a heavy fusillade of stones. 
Stones, it might be thought, are but poor weapons 
when opposed to revolvers, but the Koreans are the 
most expert stone-throwers in the world, both in 
their accuracy of aim and in the force and distance 
of the throw. Many of the Japanese were wounded 
and bruised. Had they broken all must have 
perished. But, like brave men, they kept their phalanx 
firmly, and carrying their wounded in the centre, they 
succeeded as night fell in getting out of the city. 
They were twenty -six miles from Chemulpo. They 
had no food. A deluge of rain came on and added 
to the miseries of their long night march. They 
lost their way in the black darkness, and it was not 
till the afternoon of the following day that they 
reached the port. There the local Korean official 
provided them' with quarters and promised to protect 
them, and, worn and exhausted, all fell down on 
the floors of the rooms that were given to them and 
were instantaneously asleep. They were soon roused. 
Another attack was made on them — again they had 
to fight their way, this time not only through an 
angry mob but against disciplined soldiers. They 
at last reached the beach, where they seized a boat 
in which they put to sea, without food or water, 
with only the lightest summer clothing, and it all 
in rags, to protect them against the cold of night, 
without one expert boatman among their number. 
They knew, however, that H.M.S. Flying Fish was 
somewhere in the neighbourhood, and after having 
been for one day and a half at sea they were seen 
and rescued by her and brought to Nagasaki. Five 
of their original number had been killed, and five 
of those taken on board the Flying Fish were seri- 
ously wounded. Four more were killed by the mob 
in Seoul at the first outbreak, before they could 
find refuge in the Legation. 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 311 

The Tai Won Kun enjoyed a momentary triumph. 
He was once more back in power. The hated Queen 
had disappeared, and was supposed to be dead. The 
Japanese had gone, and the King was entirely under 
his influence. But on August 16th, within less than 
a month from the burning of their Legation, the 
Japanese were back again, the minister being this 
time accompanied by a strong military force which 
could be reinforced in a day from the fleet of war- 
ships that was now lying off Chemulpo. He had 
brought with him an ultimatum from his Government, 
demanding satisfaction for the outrage on the Lega- 
tion and the murders of Japanese citizens, and the 
Tai Won Kun had no choice but to stifle his pride 
and accept the terms that were offered to him. They 
included a substantial indemnity, an apology, the 
punishment of the leaders of the rioters, new privi- 
leges for Japanese traders, and the right to station 
Japanese troops in the capital for the protection of 
the Legation — all bitter pills for the savage old tyrant 
to swallow. The last condition presents another 
parallel between the early European events in Japan 
and the Japanese in Korea. When British and 
French troops were stationed in Yokohama, the 
Japanese Government was called upon to provide 
barracks for them at its own cost. It had never 
made any agreement to do so, and Sir Harry Parkes, 
the British Minister in Japan at the time, never under- 
stood on what principle the burthen was thrown upon 
it. Japan was neither a conquered nor a hostile 
country, but both the British and French Governments 
instructed their representatives to insist on it. That 
of Japan was too weak to resist ; extensive barracks 
were built and kept in repair during the whole time 
— more than ten years — in which British and French 
troops were in Japan, entirely at the cost of the 
Japanese Government. To this day the injury which 



312 THE STORY OF KOREA 

was thus added to insult rankles in the hearts of 
the -Japanese, but they followed the precedent them- 
selves in Korea, and the Korean Government was 
called upon to provide and pay for proper quarters 
for the Japanese troops whom they were forced to 
admit into their capital. 

Li Hung Chang was at this time Viceroy of Chili, 
and the director of China's foreign policy. Korea 
had declared her independence when she made her 
treaty with Japan, and when China sanctioned the 
independent relationship which Korea then assumed 
with a foreign Power, she ostensibly abandoned her 
own title to exercise any authority in the future in 
Korea's affairs, but the stroke of a pen was not 
sufficient to permanently loosen the ties and senti- 
ments of suzerainty that had existed for centuries. 
Frightened by the presence of the Japanese troops 
and warships, Korea appealed to China, and China 
answered by dispatching to Seoul a large force of 
the troops which, under the direction of Li Hung; 
Chang, had been drilled and equipped according to 
the latest Western models, and held ready for any 
emergency in the garrison of Tientsin. For a time 
a collision seemed to be imminent between the 
Japanese and Chinese, but it was averted by the 
withdrawal of the latter from the capital. The camp 
which they established a few miles beyond its walls 
became a permanent one, the ostensible reason for 
its maintenance being the duty which China owed 
to her vassal King, who had received his investiture 
from the Emperor, to protect him if necessary against 
his own rebellious subjects, and to maintain him on 
his throne. The Japanese, on the other hand, when 
their new treaty had been signed, withdrew all the 
forces that they had in the first instance sent to sup- 
port their minister, with the exception of a guard of 
one or two companies of infantry for their Legation. 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 313 

Li Hung Chang was evidently determined thence- 
forth to make the influence of China felt in ' the 
peninsular kingdom. One of the ablest of his sub- 
ordinates was sent as commissioner to the capital 
with instructions to take an active part in its domestic 
affairs ; and his first act was one that showed how 
China, even when under the control of the enlightened 
Viceroy, still adhered in her foreign diplomacy to 
her old methods of duplicity and cunning. The Tai 
Won Kun was invited to visit the Chinese camp. 
Once within its fences, he was made a prisoner, and 
having been unceremoniously bundled on board one 
of the Chinese men-of-war that lay off the coast, he 
was carried to Tientsin, where he was fated to 
remain in captivity for three years. With his re- 
moval, the most disturbing element in the foreign 
affairs of Korea disappeared, and the King was at 
liberty to continue the relations which he had begun 
with Western powers and the progressive policy to 
which his father was so bitterly opposed. In the 
foreign affairs of Korea China disclaimed all in- 
fluence, and thus pursued a double course. On the 
one side, she openly avowed her duty and intention 
to maintain the King on his throne. On the other, 
she left to him the control of his foreign relations and 
the entire responsibility for whatever obligations he 
might incur to foreign powers. The Queen, who 
it was thought had perished in the disturbance of 
July, and for whom national mourning had been 
ordered, reappeared safe and well. When the 
mutineers were searching for her through the palace 
on the night of the great outbreak, one of the palace 
guardsmen threw a veil over her and carried her 
on his back right through the midst of the mob 
out of the palace. He was repeatedly stopped and 
questioned, but said that he was taking his mother, 
who was one of the palace servants, to a place of 



314 THE STORY OF KOREA 

safety. For the night the Queen was hid in an 
humble house in the town. On the following day she 
was taken in a common travelling chair, unattended, 
by mountain paths to a remote village in the pro- 
vince of Chhung Chyong, and there she remained 
in obscurity for two months. Then, when all was 
quiet again, the fact that she was alive was dis- 
closed, and she was brought back to the palace in 
becoming state and restored to her proper dignity. 
One of the chairmen who assisted in her escape after- 
wards rose to a high position in the State, and wiill 
be mentioned subsequently. 

During the two years which followed the outbreak 
of 1882 intercourse increased between Japan and 
Korea. The apology for the attack on the Legation 
was brought by a special embassy to Tokio, and 
during its stay the members made a thorough study 
of the progress Japan had achieved in Western 
civilisation, now much more apparent than in 1875, 
and became profoundly impressed with its results. 
Some of them remained in Tokio when the embassy 
had performed its function, and their official status 
was at an end ; other Koreans of good birth came as 
students or sightseers, and when they returned home 
they were full of progressive ideas, and eager to see 
their own countrymen embark on the career which 
Japan had so successfully pursued. Political parties, 
the everlasting curse of Korea, thwarted all their 
hopes. The influence of the Queen over the King 
was all-powerful. When her old enemy, the Tai 
Won Kun, was still a factor in the State, she had 
opposed his conservative intolerance, but it was the 
man and not the policy to which she objected. When 
he was removed from' the scene all the officers in, 
the State were once more filled by her relatives, 
and their conservatism was traditional. All their 
sympathies were with the old civilisation of China, 




H 
< 
O 

s 

H 

O 

X 
H 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 315 

and the reformers who had come back from Japan, 
who were members of rival families to the Min, 
could find no outlet for their abilities and aspirations. 
Two new parties were formed — that of the Queen 
and her relatives on the one side, whose platform 
was conservatism and the friendship and protection 
of China, and that of the reformers on the other, with 
the platform of progress, which would gradually 
enable Korea to stand alone, and the friendship and 
support of Japan. Beneath these outward professions 
there were, however, the old family antagonisms, 
which were too deeply planted in the hearts of all 
to be eradicated even by the new condition in which 
Korea now found herself. Reform and progress were 
weapons that could be used in the destruction of 
family rivals as well as for the benefit of the country. 
Diplomatic and consular representatives of other 
powers were now resident in Seoul. Great Britain 
had concluded a new treaty. It has been mentioned 
already that a treaty had been made in the early part 
of 1883. Great Britain was then represented at 
Tokio by Sir Harry Parkes, the greatest diplomatist 
and consul of any nationality that has ever served 
in the Far East, whose knowledge of both China 
and Japan, and whose appreciation of all the essential 
elements of the political and commercial interests 
of the British Empire in the Far East were founded 
on a lifelong experience of both countries. J lis 
services were of course available for the negotia- 
tion of the new treaty with Korea, but for some in- 
scrutable reason the task was entrusted by the British 
Government, not to the well-tried and trusted 
diplomatist but to the admiral who chanced at the 
moment to hold the command of the fleet on thq 
China Station. The result was most unsatisfactory. 
The diplomatic skill of the gallant admiral was on 
a par with his knowledge of Asiatic people, and 



316 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the treaty was deficient in many points that were 
of vital importance for the conduct of trade and the 
security of British subjects resident in Korea. For- 
tunately, the first blunder could be amended. The 
admiral's treaty was not ratified, and in April, 1884, 
Sir Harry Parkes was sent to Seoul, commissioned 
to conclude a new treaty. His commanding person- 
ality, long Eastern experience, and profound know- 
ledge of the Asiatic character enabled him 1 to 
accomplish his task within a fortnight, the new treaty 
being as complete in all its provisions as the first 
was the reverse. Sir Harry Parkes was accompanied 
by his daughter, 1 who, though little more than a 
girl in years, had already presided with her father 
for two years over the Legations at Tokio and Peking. 
The wife of the first United States Minister iwas 
already in the capital, and the conclusion pf the 
British treaty was signalised by another marked de- 
parture from ancient customs. Both ladies were 
invited to an audience with the Queen at the palace, 
the two being the first women of the West, not only 
to be admitted within the sealed precincts of the 
women's quarters of the palace but to enter the 
capital. The Queen, who less than two years before 
had fled in disguise from murderous assassins, whose 
life had only been saved by the devoted self-sacrifice 
of one of the palace ladies and the courage and 
loyalty of some of her humblest servants, proved to 
be a most gracious lady, who, with all her con- 
servative prejudices, with all her attachment to the 
time-honoured customs of antiquity could discharge 
the new social duties of her great station with no less 
charms of tact, dignity, and kindliness than would 
have been shown by one of her European sisters at 
a similar function. 

1 Now Mrs. J. J. Keswick, of Mabie, Dumfriesshire. 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 317 

Mrs. Keswick has kindly furnished the writer with 
the following description (written at the time) of her 
audience with the Queen : — 



" Yesterday (May 7, 1884) Mrs. Foote, the wife of the American 
Minister and I were presented at the Korean Court. An invitation 
from the Queen had come to us the previous day, and we arrived in 
the Palace grounds at the appointed hour — four o'clock. In the 
grounds we were received at some distance from the Palace itself by 
two ladies in waiting, the gentlemen, both of the two Legations and 
Korean, who had hitherto escorted us not being permitted to 
accompany us any further. The ladies were in full court costume, 
long baggy white trousers and sweeping blue grenadine skirts and 
small cape bodies ; over all, a robe of stiff green brocade which 
came down to the knees and was fastened behind by a crimson belt 
which hung low down. Their hair was dressed very high on their 
heads in the most elaborate style of plaits and bows and they wore 
neat little shoes and white stockings.. 

" We were conducted by the ladies to a small summer-house where 
cakes and coffee were handed to us. Then we were shown round the 
grounds and into some of the ladies' private apartments which were 
quite devoid of furniture (d la Japonaise), and then, after waiting for 
about an hour, we were informed that their Majesties were ready to 
receive us. We were ushered into a courtyard, up some steep steps, 
and into a long room open down one side and hung with fine 
bamboo mats. The Queen was seated behind a table on the right 
of the King, and the little Prince on his left. The Queen was very 
much painted and powdered and wore the same dress as her 
waiting women, only on her uppermost robe she had some gold 
embroidery on the shoulders which, at a distance, reminded one 
of epaulettes. The King's robe was crimson and he had also the 
gold on the shoulders ; he wore the high official cap. The Prince, 
a bright little fellow, eleven years old, was dressed in a robe of some 
dark material and was just the image of his father. Both King and 
Queen were very gracious ; they inquired how I liked their country, 
and were very much surprised to hear that I rode on horseback ; 
they expressed their pleasure at the satisfactory settlement of 
the Treaty, and hoped that both countries would always remain 
on good terms with one another. Then the little Prince got down 
from his chair and came to shake hands with us. They inquired 
how old I was, how many brothers and sisters I had, and what their 



318 THE STORY OF KOREA 

ages were, and they hoped I had received good news from home ; 
they also conversed very pleasantly with Mrs. Foote. 

" The Queen is very small, but evidently understands how to hold 
her own, and rules the King who is a bright, cheery, little man. 
After the reception had lasted about half an hour, their Majesties 
suggested that we might be tired, so we were invited to retire and 
rest in a small room adjoining where sweetmeats and cups of 
tea were offered to us. We were then informed that some fireworks 
had been arranged for our entertainment which were to take place 
later, and that, therefore, the Queen hoped that we would remain to 
dinner. Of course we accepted the invitation with much pleasure. 

" Whilst we were resting, the Queen sent in a little present to 
Mrs. Foote and myself which consisted of a small workbox con- 
taining many little cushions and cases prettily embroidered and 
worked by the ladies of the Palace. One amusing incident occurred 
which I must just mention. Whilst resting after our audience with 
the Queen, some of the ministers and chamber ladies of the Palace 
came in to see us, and one of the oldest of them, who wished to 
be very polite, took out his cigar case and offered us each a large 
cigar ! I refused, of course, thanking him at the same time, and 
explaining that it was not the rule with English ladies to smoke. I 
should perhaps mention here that all the Korean women and even 
children smoke a great deal, you scarcely ever see the former 
without long pipes in their mouths. After this we had another 
interview with their Majesties ; this time, however, they were in 
simple everyday dress — the King in loose robe and high hat, the 
Queen in the ordinary petticoat and cape of the Korean women. 
She is evidently a spirited, courageous little woman, and as I looked 
at her seated there, surrounded by her court, I could not help 
thinking of the time two years ago, when a rebellion occurred 
in Korea and she had to fly for her life. Three times she was 
captured by the rebels, and the third time she only escaped by 
disguising herself as a peasant woman : so she has truly experienced 
dangers and vicissitudes in her life. 

" When it became dark, we dined. Some of the Korean Ministers 
were present and two of our officers were also invited, the first 
time that gentlemen had been admitted to the palace. The dinner 
was served in foreign style, the waiters were not great adepts 
at serving, but all was nicely arranged and the food was well 
cooked. The conversation flagged rather as, having only one 
interpreter, we could not all talk at once, but the Ministers tried 
to make themselves agreeable by signs and their intentions were 



MODERN KOREA— 1868-84 319 

friendly. When the dinner was over, we rejoined the ladies and 
witnessed the fireworks from a little pavilion. The court was 
lighted with lanterns of various colours which made the scene look 
gay. The fireworks were nothing very striking, some in the shape 
of Korean characters for happiness and some fire fountains were the 
only pretty or novel ones that I saw. We were getting rather 
weary too for we had been nearly six hours at the palace, and our 
minds were on the stretch the whole time ; so when shortly after- 
wards we received a message from the Queen saying she would like 
to see us once more before leaving, we were very glad and 
went immediately. The King, Queen, and Prince were seated 
as before at their respective tables. The Queen began the 
conversation (as usual) asking how we liked the fireworks. We 
thanked her for the entertainment, and said we had spent a very 
pleasant time at the palace. Then we were introduced to the 
Prince's little betrothed bride, a nice child of thirteen years old, 
very shy, poor little mite, and very much painted and powdered. 
After a little more conversation, we bowed our adieus and left, 
being escorted home by some of the King's soldiers carrying 
the gay lanterns that had illuminated the court during the fireworks 
— so we were informed — quite an imposing procession." 

The following is a translation of the letter of 
which a reduced facsimile is given on page 131 : — 

" On the 15th day of the 4th month of the 493rd year of Great 
Chosen, Ha, Lady of the Household of the first rank, desires to 
know how Miss Parkes has passed the night. Yesterday, when she 
arrived here she was in the enjoyment of robust health, but Madame 
Ha fears she must have been greatly fatigued. She hopes she 
has rested well and is now quite restored. 

" The three Palaces (King, Queen and Crown Prince) are well and 
send their compliments. 

"Her Majesty the Queen sends by a messenger a few poor 
specimens of Korean productions which she begs Miss Parkes 
to accept, and is sorry they are not of more value." 



CHAPTER XV 

MODERN KOREA— I 8 84- 1 905 

There now seemed to be a complete change both 
in the Government and people in their attitude 
towards foreigners. Reforms and industries founded 
on Western models were introduced. The streets of 
the capital, which had hitherto continued ;to justify the 
description given of them by the Japanese in 1876, 
were cleansed, alterations were made in the Court 
dress, a model farm established, and a powder-mill 
erected. New treaties were signed, European diplo- 
matists took up their permanent residences in the 
capital, and a still greater departure was made when 
a special embassy was sent to the United ^States 
with a near relative of the Queen at its head. The 
ambassador, whose name was Min Yong Ik, was 
at the time one of the most progressive of the Court 
nobles. He had already visited Japan and brought 
back with him a conviction that Korea's hope for 
the future lay in her following the example that 
Japan held forth to her, and he had since used hiis 
position in the Court and his family connection with 
the Throne to impress his own convictions on the 
King, not without success. The King was evidently 
adapting himself to the altered conditions of the 
time. The strong-minded and influential Queen had 
shown her willingness to meet Europeans in social 
intercourse : several of the progressive party had 

been nominated to responsible posts in the Govern- 

320 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 321 

ment ; and while the officials of opposite tendency 
were not only numerous but still held the most im- 
portant offices of the State, they were obliged to cloak 
their prejudices in sullen silence. Last of all, the 
Tai Won Kun, the archangel of bigotry, was a 
prisoner in China. All seemed to promise well for 
a fair future of peace and progress, when once more 
the curse of party faction cast its poisonous blight 
on Court, Government, and people. 

The Progressionists were not satisfied with all 
they had achieved. As in Japan in the seventies and 
even later, as at the present day among our own 
subjects in India, their leaders wanted to run before 
they had learnt to walk without stumbling, to accom- 
plish in a day the reforms that in other countries 
had only been achieved after centuries of struggle 
and study. Murder has ever been one of the principal 
party weapons in Korea, and the Progressionists now 
resolved to use it for the removal of the leading 
Conservative ministers from the side and councils of 
the King. 

On the night of December 4, 1884, a State banquet 
was given to celebrate the opening of a new post- 
office. It was attended by all the foreign diplomatic 
representatives except the Japanese, by the principal 
ministers of the Government, and by many of the 
great nobles. Among the latter was Min Yong Ik, 
the former ambassador to the United States. He had 
in ; the interval which had passed since his return 
disassociated himself from the Progressionists and 
espoused the party of the Conservatives and had, 
in consequence, become the object of intense ani- 
mosity on the part of the former. Towards the 
close of the banquet a fire broke out in an adjoining 
building, and the party broke up ; Min Yong Ik, 
one of the duties of whose office was to superintend 
the measures for the prevention of fire, hurried out 

21 



322 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in advance of the rest of the guests. 'He had scarcely 
got outside the gateway when he was suddenly 
attacked by armed men, and received several severe 
sword wounds. While the confusion and alarm of the 
ministers at this incident were at their height, the 
progressive leaders hastened to the palace, and there 
the King, already inclined towards their policy of 
reform, was completely under their influence. It 
was not difficult to persuade him that a general 
conspiracy had broken out, that both his throne and 
his life were in danger, and that his hope of safety 
lay in obtaining the protection of the Japanese against 
his own subjects who hated his liberal tendencies. 
Two messengers were promptly dispatched to the 
Japanese minister (who, it is to be remembered, 
was not present at the banquet) with letters request- 
ing his immediate presence at the palace. They 
were followed by a third bearing an autograph letter 
from the King to the same effect, and the Japanese 
minister promptly complied and proceeded to the 
palace at the head of his entire guard of 130 soldiers 
under the command of a captain. Japanese sentries 
were placed at all the gates of the palace, the King's 
own chambers were surrounded by a strong guard, 
and the King, now effectually cut off from all com- 
munication with his responsible ministers, was in the 
hands of the progressive conspirators. Justice in 
Korea was speedy when it had to be directed against 
political adversaries. The power of life and death 
over all his subjects without distinction of rank was 
always the prerogative of the King. Warrants were 
issued in his name, and before dawn broke seven, 
of his ministers, all prominent Conservative leaders, 
had been arrested and summarily executed. Several 
of the King's own personal attendants, eunuchs and 
others, known to be favourable to the Conservatives, 
met with the same fate. All the vacant offices weije 






MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 323 

then conferred on the progressive leaders, and their 
party was now established in power. 

Their triumph was short-lived — shorter even than 
had been that of the Tai Won Kun in 1882. The 
surviving Conservatives sent tidings of what had 
happened to the commander of the Chinese troops 
outside the capital, and appealed for his help to 
protect the King against his own rebellious subjects. 
This was the duty for which Chinese troops were 
kept in Korea, and the commander had therefore no 
hesitation in complying with the appeal made to 
him. He at once marched his men to the palace ; 
there they were met by the Japanese, already in 
possession, and a brisk encounter took place between 
the two. The Japanese fought with their usual 
bravery, but the overwhelming numbers of the 
Chinese, who were no less well-drilled and armed 
than the Japanese, gave them the victory. The palace 
gates were taken. The Japanese minister and troops 
had to retreat to their own Legation, losing several 
of their men as they did so, but preserving good 
order, and the Progressionists were left to their fate. 
A few of them succeeded in escaping to the Japanese 
Legation, and thence out of the country, but the 
majority were taken and hacked to pieces by their 
own infuriated countrymen. They had enjoyed two 
days of power. 

How far the Japanese Minister was responsible 
for the original conspiracy, whether he was a con- 
scious partner in it, or his own want of judgment 
and perspicacity made him merely a tool in the hands 
of the astute and unscrupulous Koreans, is not 
publicly known, though a critical investigation of 
all the facts that are known tend to show that he 
was both a tool and a conspirator. He did not 
attend the banquet which afforded the opportunity 
for the first outbreak, though, as doyen of the diplo- 



324 THE STORY OF KOREA 

matic corps, it was peculiarly his duty to have done 
so, unless prevented by ill-health. His Legation 
guard was already paraded in full order, with arms 
and ammunition, and ready to march when the first 
messenger from the palace arrived there ; but this 
was afterwards explained by the fact that the troops' 
orders required them always to parade in case of 
fire. Both he and his staff had been ostentatiously 
on such intimate terms of friendship with the pro- 
gressive leaders that the latter had come to be gener- 
ally known in Korea as " the Japanese party." One 
of the chief eunuchs of the palace was murdered 
in his presence, and with all his own soldiers at 
his elbow he made no attempt to protect the un- 
fortunate man by force, though he is said to have 
remonstrated with the murderers. Whatever may 
have been the degree of responsibility, his action 
was equally unfortunate for the good name of his 
own country, for Korea, and for his political friends, 
who would not have stirred had they not felt they 
could rely on his moral and material support. 

The hatred of the lower classes of Korea for the 
Japanese, transmitted from their ancestors of the 
time of Hideyoshi, had not been in the least minimised 
by the new order of affairs. The capital was in a, 
condition of universal riot during the following days 
of the entente, and placid and gentle as are the 
Koreans in their ordinary lives, no nation in the 
world can furnish a mob that is more cruej, more 
reckless of their own and others' lives, than they 
when their passions are fully roused. When all the 
Progressionists who could be found had been killed 
and their homes pillaged an4 burnt, the wrath of 
the rioters turned towards the Japanese. All whose 
houses were scattered through the city met the same 
fate as the progressive conspirators, and then the 
Legation itself was attacked. The staff and guard 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 325 

had been increased by refugees, both Japanese and 
Korean, who had escaped from the streets, and 
there were now nearly three hundred persons in all, 
including several women and children, inside its 
walls. There were no provisions, not even water, 
for so large a number. They were shut pff from 
all hope of help. The Government was disorganised ; 
the troops whom it could have summoned to restore 
order were joined with the rioters, and all were now 
gathered round the walls of the Legation thirsting 
for the blood of its inmates. The situation was a 
herald in a small way of what occurred in Peking 
in 1900 — different, however, from it in that the garri- 
son, without provisions or the possibility of obtaining 
them, had no other resource than that of fighting 
their way out of the Legation and the city to the 
sea coast as their predecessors had done two years 
before. 

The minister was not the same as the one who 
had the same trying experience in 1882 ; but what- 
ever the diplomatic blunders of the present had been, 
when it came to a physical fight for his own pre- 
servation and that of his countrymen who looked to 
him for protection, he showed no less courage and 
resource than his predecessor. The soldiers were 
formed into a square, with women, children, wounded, 
and Korean refugees in the centre, and the whole 
body then fought their way through the streets 
swarming with rioters, both civilians and soldiers 
who had cast aside all the bonds of discipline, to 
the great southern gate of the city. This they 
found barred against them. It was of solid con- 
struction and great strength, but fortunately among 
the Japanese were some carpenters who had brought 
their axes with them in their retreat and they cut 
a way through for the whole party. Marching 
through the whole night, through heavy falls of snow 



326 THE STORY OF KOREA 

as their predecessors had done through storms of 
rain, suffering severely from the bitter cold and 
impeded by the women and children, they reached 
Chemulpo without further loss in eighteen hours. 

Long diplomatic negotiations followed this affair. 
The Japanese people again clamoured for war, this 
time even more loudly against China than against 
Korea, but two of the ablest ministers that Japan 
ever possessed, Ito and Inouye, were entrusted with 
a settlement, the former with China and the latter 
with Korea, and both were eminently successful. An 
agreement was come to and signed at Tientsin on 
April 19, 1885, defining the relations that China and 
Japan should for the future occupy towards each 
other in Korea, the principal items of which we ; re 
that both should withdraw their troops from Korea, 
that neither should again dispatch troops to the 
peninsula without previous notice to the other ; and 
that Korea should be encouraged by both powers to 
work out her own salvation in the paths of progress 
and good government. In his negotiations with 
Korea, Inouye had an easier task than his colleague 
in China. He knew that Japan, in the person of 
her accredited representative, had not been guilt- 
less, and he easily obtained the moderate indemnity 
which he asked for the murdered Japanese and for 
the Legation, which had been destroyed by the rioters 
after its evacuation. 

It is not our purpose to follow in detail the history 
of Korea during the next ten years. Japan had 
for the time being destroyed all possibility of in- 
fluencing the country, either for its or her own good. 
She was sincerely desirous of leading it into the paths 
of modern progress, of helping it to acquire such 
strength and knowledge as would in time enable 
it to take care of itself, even against Russia. But 
she had lost the chance of gaining respect and affec- 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 327 

tion on the part of her pupil, without which no 
teacher, no matter how accomplished or earnest, can 
ever be successful. Hatred, bitter and intense, was 
the predominant feeling in Korean hearts to Japan 
and the Japanese. Korea was flung into the arms of 
her old suzerain by the events of 1884. The Queen, 
the courtiers, all the principal officials of the 
kingdom, who were all members of the Queen's 
family, were devoted to China and all that the Con- 
servatism of China implied. Some of them were 
bigoted followers of Confucianism, saturated with 
a veneration for his philosophy that rendered all 
sympathy with European thought or science im- 
possible. Some, more practical statesmen, honestly 
believed that Korea's national security and progress 
depended wholly on the support of China. The sur- 
vivors of the progressive leaders were fugitives in 
Japan or the United States, dependent on charity 
for their support. The Tai Won Kun was permitted 
to return from his imprisonment in China, but all 
his former influence and prestige were gone — drowned 
in the tide of prosperity which had carried his hated 
rivals, the Mins, to power, and he lived with his few 
followers in obscure retirement. Yuen, Li Hung 
Chang's deputy, little if at all less able and astute than 
his great chief, was at the capital, no longer as com- 
missioner but as Resident, a semi -gubernatorial office, 
and he was de facto the King of Korea. Nothing 
was done without consulting him, nor without Jiis 
sanction. European technical advisers were engaged 
and new industries started ; political and official 
advisers were also engaged to help in the reform o ; f 
the State administration ; Koreans were sent abroad 
to study ; but Yuen was ever in the background, 
and real national progress was impossible among a 
people who themselves tenaciously clung to all their 
oldest traditions and customs. Foreign trade largely 



328 THE STORY OF KOREA 

increased, especially in imports. A Customs service, 
managed on the model of and conducted by officers 
of the great China service, was established, and the 
receipts from duties increased three and four fold 
within very few years. Populous settlements were 
established ,at the open ports. Here again Japan 
was unfortunate. The Japanese who came to these 
ports were the reverse of a credit to their country ; 
unscrupulous adventurers, bullies, and the scum of 
all the ruffiandom of Japan predominated among 
them, and their conduct and demeanour towards the 
gentle, submissive, and ignorant natives, who were 
unresisting victims to their cupidity and cruelty, were 
a poor recommendation of the new civilisation pf 
which they boasted. On the other hand, Chinese 
traders — law-observing, peaceable, and scrupulously 
honest in all their transactions — were living cer- 
tificates of the morality engendered by a faithful 
observance of the old. 

One subsequent incident to the emeute of 1884 
should be mentioned. In 1885 relations were so 
strained between Great Britain and Russia that 
war between them seemed to be imminent ; 
and in order both to provide an additional 
coaling-station for her fleet in the event of war, 
and to block the passage of Russian cruisers 
southwards on possible raids on the British Colonies, 
Great Britain occupied the Nan Hau Islands (Port 
Hamilton) without the consent of or even any previous 
attempt to obtain the consent of either Japan, Korea, 
the owner of the islands, or China, the suzerain of 
the owner. All three powers mildly protested, the 
only result being an offer from H.M. Government 
to lease the islands from Korea at an annual rental, 
of five thousand pounds, the amount of the rental 
being fixed by the lessees. The offer was refused, as 
its acceptance would have placed it out of the power 





\ 



V 




■ f * 1 1 

KIM OK KIUX. 



To face p. 328. 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 329 

of Korea to refuse a similar offer from Russia in 
regard to another port. The British flag was hoisted 
and a garrison established on the islands. The occu- 
pation lasted for two years, notwithstanding continued 
remonstrances from China, and then, the Russian 
crisis having passed away, it ended, China guaran- 
teeing that " neither the group of Korean Islands in 
which Port Hamilton is situated nor any part of 
Korean territory should be occupied by another 
Power," while Russia at the same time gave an ex- 
plicit guarantee to China, distinctly declaring that "in 
the future Russia would not take Korean territory." 
Subsequent history afforded interesting comments on 
both guarantees. 

Among the leaders of the conspiracy in 1884 who 
escaped from Korea, the most prominent was a young 
noble named Kim Ok Kiun. He was a man of 
marked intelligence, of the most attractive manners, 
and when a member of the embassy which came 
to Tokio in 1882 he made a most favourable im- 
pression on all the European diplomatists with whom 
he came in contact, while his attainments as an 
accomplished and elegant Chinese scholar no less 
favourably impressed the statesmen and scholars of 
Japan. He was in turn equally impressed with the 
advantages of European civilisation, and his ability 
and enthusiasm made him a leader among the Pro- 
gressionists after his return to his own country. Un- 
fortunately, his enthusiasm made him also a leader 
of the conspiracy of 1884, and its failure made him 
a refugee in Japan. The old forms of justice were 
still in force in Korea, and the vengeance of his 
political enemies, which could not reach himself, fell 
upon his family and relatives. All — men, women, 
children, and servants — were put to death, and all 
his property confiscated. This did not tend to soften 
the bitterness w r hich he felt in his exile to those 



330 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in power in his own country, and while enjoying the 
hospitality and protection of Japan he was constantly 
engaged in plotting and planning in conjunction with 
Japanese agitators, of whom there were always plenty 
in Japan, new schemes for the overthrow of his 
Government. His charm of manner, his accomplish- 
ments, to which in his exile he added the acquisition 
of the Japanese language, his position as a political 
fugitive bereft of country and family, secured for him 
a toleration, even a welcome, in Japan, which was 
not rendered the less friendly by the knowledge of 
the remorseless cruelty and unscrupulous methods 
that he had already used and was ready to use again 
to gain his ends. Biut his plotting at last became 
too evident, and after many warnings he was de- 
ported from Tokio by the Japanese Government as 
a menace to the good relations which it was anxious 
to maintain with Korea, first to the remote and iso- 
lated Bonin Islands, where he compared himself to 
Napoleon at St. Helena, and when it was found that 
the climate of the islands was too exhausting for him 
he was again moved to Hakodate, a move which 
might be compared to one from Jamaica to New- 
foundland. After some years in both places he was 
once more permitted to return to Tokio on the 
promise of good behaviour ; but his abilities, com- 
bined with a restless disposition, entirely unfitted him 
for a life of political inactivity, and he was no sooner 
back in Tokio than he was plunged again in plots 
and intrigues in conjunction with fellow-exiles and 
Japanese sympathisers. 

Through all the years he was in Japan, whether 
in the capital or in remote outlying districts, he was 
never lost sight of by his own Government, which 
never lost its desire for revenge for his share in the 
outbreak of 1884, nor ceased to regard him as 0, 
potential danger to its own stability. Several 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 331 

attempts were made to procure his formal extradition, 
and when they failed his Government did not disdain 
to send its emissaries to Japan to use against him 
the orthodox Korean methods of assassination — by 
knife or poison. One of them at last succeeded in 
decoying him to Shanghai, and two days after his 
arrival he was shot in his hotel by the false friend 
who had brought him there. The Chinese authori- 
ties relieved themselves of their duty of vindicating 
this outrage on their soil by sending both the assassin 
and the body of his victim in a man-of-war to Korea. 
There the news of the event had been received with 
joy, which was indecently exhibited, by the Min party, 
who were in power, and with sullen sorrow and in- 
dignation by would-be reformers. The assassin, a 
man of high degree, else he could not have imposed 
his friendship on Kim Ok Kiun, was openly honoured 
with rank and office, and the body of his victim was 
given to the public executioner for mutilation and 
exposure as that of a criminal who had paid the last 
penalty of the law. The action both of the Chinese 
and Korean Governments aroused much indignation in 
Japan ; and though the Japanese had no locus standi 
which afforded them legitimate grounds for formal 
protests to either, it contributed in no small degree 
to the ill-will which was shortly afterwards to appear 
and culminate in events that revolutionised the rela- 
tions of all three powers. 

The Tong Haks were members of a Society formed 
in 1864, whose object was the maintenance of all 
the old national customs and religion, as against 
Christianity and its doctrines, which were then gaining 
some ground. With the disappearance of Christianity 
after the persecution of 1866, the object of the Society 
had disappeared, and the Society itself had apparently 
ceased to exist. Nothing had been heard of the 
Tong Haks throughout all the early incidents of 



332 THE STORY OF KOREA 

foreign intercourse. Their sentiments and aspira- 
tions and those of Kim Ok Kiun were as opposite 
as the poles, and it is difficult to believe that any 
sympathy with the latter's fate could have entered 
their minds. But at the same time, there is no doubt 
that the surviving members who had been living in 
provincial obscurity seized the opportunity afforded 
by the discredit brought on the Government by the 
incident, both abroad and among a section of its 
own people, to assert themselves once more. A re- 
bellion occurred in the province of Cholla which 
spread both northwards and eastwards, and developed 
so rapidly as soon to threaten the very existence of 
the Government. The rebels professed no disloyalty 
to the King, but declared in a published ultimatum 
that they meant to remove from his side " the 
ministers, governors, and magistrates who were in- 
different to the welfare of their country, and bent 
only on enriching themselves." The troops sent 
against them were repeatedly defeated, and at last 
the Government, thoroughly alarmed, appealed to its 
suzerain for help. China complied, and sent a large 
force to Korea, warning Japan, as she was bound 
to do by the Treaty of Tientsin, that she had done 
so. Japan, in her turn, quickly sent an equally 
large force, and the first step was taken that led to 
the China- Japan War. 

The subsequent incidents that culminated in war 
may be summarised with the utmost brevity in the 
statements that Japan proposed to China that both 
should join in reforming the corruption and in- 
efficiency that characterised the Korean Government ; 
that China refused, and Japan then undertook the 
task herself ; that both powers largely reinforced 
their troops in the peninsula ; that an encounter 
on the sea, that might almost be called accidental, 
was the first open signal of the war. Two battles 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 333 

were fought on Korean soil. The Chinese were 
driven from Asan, a village on the coast about fifty 
miles from Seoul, where they had established them- 
selves in an entrenched camp. They retreated in 
good order to Phyong An, their old battle -grounjd 
in the days of Hideyoshi, where they united with a 
large Chinese force that had marched from the 
northern frontier. Here they were soon again 
attacked by the Japanese, and suffered a crushing 
defeat. After that the war was carried on beyond 
Korea's borders, and in every stage, both on sea 
and land, complete victory attended the Japanese 
arms. China was beaten to her knees : her capital 
was threatened, and would have fallen had it not 
been for the peace that was concluded at Shimonoseki 
on April 17, 1895. 

The first clause of the treaty of peace provided 
for the " recognition of the full and complete inde- 
pendence of Korea by China.' ' China's suzerainty 
was over. All her right to interfere in the affairs 
of the peninsula for which she had paid so dearly, 
was at an end, and Japan was left free to use all 
the prestige she had now acquired as the conqueror 
of the mighty Empire in forcing on the Korean 
Government the domestic reforms that were con- 
sidered essential to its future salvation. She gave 
the greatest proof she could of her earnestness by 
entrusting the duty to Count Inouye, whose experi- 
ence, ability, and courage as a statesman were second 
only to those of Prince Ito, his lifelong friend and 
fellow-worker, if indeed second even to his. Un- 
fortunately, Count Inouye made the one great mis- 
take of his otherwise unclouded career. He judged 
the receptive capacities of the Koreans by those of 
his own countrymen, and proceeded to thrust ,upon 
them a series of national and domestic reforms that 
were as bewildering in their novelty as they were 



334 THE STORY OF KOREA 

in their number, and extended from the remodelling 
of the Court, the army, and the local government 
down to such details as the length of the pipes which 
were the inseparable companions of every Korean, 
man, woman, and child, and the method of dressing 
the hair. Insignificant as the latter may appear, it 
was one that appealed to the greatest pride of 
Korean manhood. In Korea boys wear their hair 
in a long plait which hangs down their backs, a 
style that gives them an intensely feminine appear- 
ance, and which imposed on all early European 
visitors to Korea a wrong belief as to their sex., 
After marriage — and a Korean continues to be a 
boy in the estimation of the law and of the people 
till he is married — the plait is cut off and the hair 
gathered in a topknot on the crown, and the dignity 
of a hat is assumed. Topknot and hat are the out- 
ward symbols of full manhood, though the wearer 
may be still a boy of very tender years. Count 
Inouye ordered that both plaits and topknots should 
be abandoned and the European style of hair- 
dressing followed. A similar reform had been un- 
resistingly accepted in his own country, but it pro- 
duced a perfect furore of opposition in Korea. Not 
only subordinate officials but even Cabinet ministers 
resigned their offices rather than obey it, though the 
King set them a good example by having his own 
hair, as well as that of the Crown Prince and of all the 
palace attendants, cut in the new style. In the capital 
people were forced to obey, but it was only in its well- 
policed streets that those who did so dared to show 
themselves. And the capital was nearly starved. 
Farmers, bringing their produce to its markets, could 
not enter the gates with their topknots. Police were 
stationed at all the main gates to tell them of the 
new order and to see that it was obeyed. They could 
not return to their own villages without the top- 




Q 
W 



o 

K 

o 



o 

« 



O 

w 



w 

Q 
O 

fa 
o 

& 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 335 

knots. If they did, they were mobbed and beaten 
by their indignant fellow-villagers. So they left the 
capital to itself, and its markets were empty. The 
only class who really profited by the order were the 
Japanese barbers in Seoul, who reaped a golden 
harvest, none of their Korean confreres having as yet 
acquired the art of European hair-dressing. 

While Count Inouye remained in Korea all went 
well, but when he left and his place was taken by 
an official with none of his ability or strength of 
character, who was as fitted for dealing with the 
delicate task that confronted him as a rustic clown 
is to be entrusted with the management of a com- 
plicated machine, all that he had effected was 
speedily undone. Viscount Miura, the new Resident, 
was an old soldier who had won some distinc- 
tion in active service, but a tyrant, competent 
perhaps to discharge the duties of a military dictator 
in a conquered country under martial law, where 
the soldiers of the conqueror were granted unlimited 
licence, but no other. His appointment was one 
of the worst of the many blunders which Japan com- 
mitted in Korea. While such was the character of 
the personal representative of the Emperor, that of 
the ordinary Japanese citizens who now flocked to 
Korea in greatly increasing numbers, to exploit the 
fields of plunder that success in war had opened 
to them, was even worse. As in 1884, adventurers, 
ruffians, and bullies who could find no scope for their 
talents in their own country poured into Korea, and 
speedily made themselves a terror to the unhappy, 
downtrodden, and submissive people. Those who 
have only known the polished, scholarly, quick-witted, 
and accomplished gentlemen, the highest models of 
smiling and dignified courtesy, that are met in London 
or in the Court or salons of Tokio, or the suave 
tradesmen of the White City in 1910, can form but 



336 THE STORY OF KOREA 

little idea of the Japanese hooligan, whether of the 
lower or the middle classes — there are abundance 
of both — when he can give full play to his cruelty and 
cupidity. Korea was now overrun by such, and they 
brought terror with them wherever they came. 
Everywhere, both in towns and in the country, they 
found easy victims in a timid and defenceless people. 
The Korean peasants, it may be said, suffered from 
them little worse than they had been accustomed for 
centuries to endure from their own nobles and 
officials. But the methods of the two were different. 
Under his own authorities the sanctity of the 
peasant's home was always inviolate : his person was 
safe so long as no criminal accusation could be formu- 
lated against him ; all his scruples were respected. 
Neither home, person, nor sentiment was ever safe 
when a Japanese rowdy came upon the scene. The 
most high-spirited English lad will patiently sub- 
mit to a caning from his schoolmaster, but the 
meekest would fight tooth and nail against a similar 
infliction at the hands of a stranger, even if he had 
been caught red-handed in deeds that might merit 
the punishment. The Korean is no more than a 
schoolboy. What he would bear uncomplainingly 
from his own authorities was a source of bitter 
humiliation as well as suffering when it came frolm 
the hands of his traditional enemies. All through 
the country there were Japanese officials whose duty 
it was to restrain and punish the licence of their own 
countrymen. But the first conception of his duty 
that was present to the minds of the subordinate 
Japanese local officials was that they should pro- 
tect and shield their own countrymen, let the right 
lie where it may, and under their chief in Korea they 
gave full play to their partiality. An outraged 
Korean had as much chance of redress through the 
offices of a Japanese official in a district remote 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 337 

enough to be safe from foreign criticism as a negro 
slave from a magisterial bench of Southern planters 
or an English poacher in the eighteenth century from 
one of game -preserving squires. 

All foreign witnesses, press correspondents, 
travellers, and missionaries — one of the most out- 
spoken of the latter was Bishop Corfe, the head of 
the Anglican Mission — are unanimous in their con- 
demnation of the conduct of the lower classes of the 
Japanese in Korea at this period. But there is a 
higher authority in regard to it than any European. 
Even Count Inouye, great and poiwerful as he was, 
would have hesitated to condemn his own countrymen 
in a foreign land had he not the strongest reasons 
for it, and his description of it as published in the 
Nichi Nichi Shimbun, which, at the time, worthily 
occupied in Tokio the position that the Times holds 
in London, was as follows : 

" All the Japanese are overbearing and rude in their dealings with 
the Koreans. The readiness of the Chinese to bow their heads may 
be a natural instinct, but this trait in their character is their strength 
as merchants. The Japanese are not only overbearing but violent 
in their attitude towards the Koreans. When there is the slightest 
misunderstanding, they do not hesitate to employ their fists. Indeed, 
it is not uncommon for them to pitch Koreans into the river, or to 
cut them down with swords. If merchants commit these acts of 
violence, the conduct of those who are not merchants may well be 
imagined. They say : ' We have made you an independent nation, 
we have saved you from the Tonghaks, whoever dares to reject our 
advice or oppose our actions is an ungrateful traitor/ Even military 
coolies use language like that towards the Koreans. Under such 
circumstances, it would be a wonder if the Koreans developed much 
friendship with the Japanese. It is natural that they should enter- 
tain more amicable feelings toward other nations than toward the 
Japanese. For this state of things the Japanese themselves are 
responsible. Now that the Chinese are returning to Korea, unless 
the Japanese correct themselves and behave with more moderation, 
they will entirely forfeit the respect and love of the Koreans. 

" Another circumstance that I regret very much for the sake of the 

22 



338 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Japanese residents is, that some of them have been unscrupulous 
enough to cheat the Korean Government and people by supplying 
them with spurious articles. The Koreans, taught by such experience, 
naturally hesitate to buy from the Japanese. An examination of 
recent purchases made by the Korean Government from Japanese 
merchants would cause any conscientious man to cry out. I do not 
say that the Japanese alone have been untrustworthy. But I hope 
that, in future, they will endeavour to get credit for honesty instead 
of aiming at immediate and speculative gains." 

All the traditional hatred of the Koreans towards 
the Japanese was intensified by their experience now 
that the protecting hand of China was gone, and 
the hatred of the people was exceeded by that of 
the Court. One of the political refugees of 1884, 
Pak Yong Hyo, had returned to Korea under the 
wings of Count Inouye. He was only less odious 
to the Court than was Kim Ok Kiun, and yet Inouye's 
influence was such that he obtained for him a high 
office in the Ministry. Inouye had insisted that the 
Queen should interfere no more in the Government. 
But her strength of character and ability were such 
that even he found it expedient to give way to her 
to some extent, and when he was gone her influence 
was as great as ever. All the great offices were 
once more filled by her relatives and partisans, and 
Pak Yong Hyo was again obliged to find personal 
safety in flight. 

Through all these events the Tai Won Kun was 
living in retirement near the capital, but always keep- 
ing his watchful eye on the current of affairs and 
ready when the opportunity came to seek vengeance 
on his hated antagonists— both the Queen and her 
relatives. He was embittered almost to madness 
when his favourite grandson was cdftvicted of a plot 
against the Government and, notwithstanding all his 
privileges of royal blood, was sentenced to a long 
term of imprisonment. All his tendencies were 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 339 

Chinese, all his desires were to see foreigners ex- 
pelled and the old policy of isolation re-established, 
and none of his countrymen hated the Japanese more 
than he. But all his aspirations, all his hatred to 
foreigners were submerged in the over-mastering 
passion with which he hated the Queen, who had now 
continuously thwarted him for more than twenty 
years, and to whom' all his official impotency was 
due. To gratify that hatred, he was willing to resort 
once more to his old methods of violence and assassi- 
nation, and to ensure their success by joining his 
fortunes with those of the Japanese. In Miura he 
found a ready tool. Between the two a plot was 
formed which in its atrocious, cowardly cruelty finds 
few parallels in the history of the world. 

On the morning of October 8, 1895, before dawn, 
a sudden attack was made on the palace by the Tai 
Won Kun, at the head of a crowd, which included 
some of his own family adherents, but was mainly 
composed of Japanese, not only of some of the worst 
rowdies, but of police officers, officials, and even 
some members of the staff of Miura's Legation. 
The palace guard was taken entirely by surprise, and 
quickly overpowered, and then the savage crowd 
spread itself throughout the whole of the vast build- 
ings, seeking the Queen. Every one who attempted 
to oppose them was ruthlessly cut down : the ladies 
of the palace were beaten and dragged over the 
floors by their hair to make them disclose the hiding- 
place of their royal mistress ; and when their courage 
and loyalty were proof against these outrages, they 
were brutally murdered ; " slashed to death and their, 
corpses burnt " was the description given in the 
Japanese papers of their fate before it was known 
that the murderers included prominent Japanese. At 
last the Queen was found, and her fate was that which 
had already befallen her faithful ladies, and Japanese 



340 



THE STORY OF KOREA 



were included among those who actually dealt her 
her death wounds. When dead, her body was taken 
into the park, where kerosene oil was poured on 
it and it was then cremated. All this time the 
Japanese troops, with their officers at their head, were 
under arms all round the royal apartments of the 
palace, preventing either ingress or egress. 

Once more the Tai Won Kun was in power, this 
time with a new Ministry of Progressionists. Hatred 
for the Queen was not sated by her death. It was 
believed for a while in the city that she had escaped 
as she had done in 1882, and a decree was issued 
in the name of the unhappy King, in which it was 
proclaimed that she was deposed and degraded, and 
in which her name and fame were ruthlessly 
vilified : 



"Our reign has already lasted two-and-thirty years, and yet it 
grieves Us to think that the country has not been sufficiently bene- 
fited under Our sway. Our Queen, of the Min family, collecting 
around Our throne a large number of her relations and partisans, has 
obscured Our intelligence, robbed the people, confused Our orders, 
bartered official rank, and practised all sorts of extortion in the 
provincial localities. Bands of lawless robbers roamed in all parts 
of the country, and the dynasty was placed in a perilous situation. 
That we have not punished her, though knowing her wickedness, 
may perhaps be ascribed to Our lack of wisdom, but it is principally 
owing to the fact that she surrounded Us with her partisans. In 
order to impose restraints upon the evil, We made a vow to the 
spirits of our ancestors in December last, to the effect that the Queen 
and all her blood relations should henceforth be prohibited from 
meddling with State affairs. It was Our hope that the Queen would 
repent of her errors. But instead of repenting, she continued to 
favour her followers and to keep at a distance those of Our own 
family. She also prevented the Ministers of State from directly 
approaching the throne. She further conspired to cause a disturbance 
by falsely making it known that it was Our wish to disband Our 
troops, and when the disturbance arose, she left our side, and 
following the method pursued by her in 1882, she hid herself beyond 
the reach of Our search. Such conduct is not only inconsistent with 




THE OLD PALACE— THE ROYAL DWELLING. 

(From Stereograph Copyrio-kt, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 340. 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 341 

her rank as Queen, but is the acme of crime and heinousness. We 
therefore, in pursuance of Our family precedents, are compelled to 
depose Our Queen and to degrade her to the level of the common 
people." 

The wretched truth soon became known ; and the 
Japanese, who were in Korea as the apostles of 
modern civilisation, whose mission it was to purify 
a Government that was seething in corruption, to 
expose the blessings of good government and security 
of life and property to a people who knew none of 
them, now appeared as employing the worst methods 
of savage barbarism, and their chief representative 
as the ally and partner of a bloodthirsty assassin. 
The Japanese Government were wholly guiltless in 
the matter. The moment the truth was known to 
it (strange to say that the truth was first made known 
at Tokio by telegrams from the Japanese ministers 
at Washington and St. Petersburg), Miura, the whole 
staff of his Legation, numbering more than forty 
persons, and all his satellites, both military and civil, 
were recalled, and a universal demand for their 
punishment was made in the press. It was even 
suggested that one and all should atone for the dis- 
grace which they had brought upon their country 
by the time-honoured expedient of harakiri. 

For a few months the King remained in his 
palace, a prisoner in the hands of his father — the Tai 
Won Kun — and the new Ministry. He was broken 
and cowed by what had happened, in such terror 
of his life that the only food which either he or the 
Crown Prince would touch was what was brought 
to him in locked boxes from the house of an American 
medical missionary. At last he escaped, and both 
King and Prince, secretly carried out of the palacej 
at night in the common palanquins that were used 
by the female servants, fled to the Russian Lega- 
tion. There he was not only free but, as he carried 



342 THE STORY OF KOREA 

the Government with him wherever he went, he was 
able by a stroke of his pen to deprive his erstwhile 
masters of all legal authority, and to appoint his own 
ministers in their places. All that Japan had gained 
by the China War was now hopelessly lost, and every 
reform which she had accomplished was undone. The 
affairs of the kingdom were directed by the King 
from his sanctuary in the Russian Legation and he, 
in the revulsion of his freedom after his imprison- 
ment, ran riot in an orgy of reactionary decrees. 
Corruption was again rife in every branch of the 
administration, all domestic affairs were in utter 
confusion, rebellion broke out in several provincial 
districts, and the outlook for the future became more 
hopeless than it had been even when the influence 
of China was all-powerful. Russia had now taken 
the place that China formerly occupied, and so far 
followed the old policy of China in leaving the King- 
absolute freedom to deal with the internal affairs of 
his kingdom as he pleased, that it seemed as if she 
was deliberately giving Korea enough rope to hang 
herself, that she was paving the way for Korea to 
fall into her own arms through the weakness that 
was being engendered by corruption and inefficiency. 
The King enjoyed the hospitality of the Russian 
Legation for two years, and then he left it to take 
up his residence in a newly erected palace, and 
simultaneously he assumed the title of Emperor. The 
distinction drawn in Oriental minds between the titles 
which are translated into English as Emperor and 
King has already been explained. The latter always 
involves the idea of subjection to a suzerain, and 
throughout the long years of Korea's history she had 
always acknowledged herself as the vassal kingdom 
of China. Her vassalage nominally ended in 1876, 
when her first treaty was concluded with Japan, but 
it lasted, in fact, till the termination of the China- 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 343 

Japan War. Count Inouye, desirous to emphasise 
in the minds of the Korean people the fact that they 
had entirely thrown off the shackles of Chinese in- 
fluence, during his stay at the Korean capital urged 
that the title should then be changed, but old associa- 
tions were still strong, and the King had not the 
courage to take what was in his eyes a drastically 
revolutionary step. In 1897, when he left the 
Russian Legation for his own newly-built palace, he 
had become inured to his freedom from his suzerain, 
and the step which appeared so formidable two years 
previously had lost its terrors for him. It was not 
one taken, as most Europeans believed at the time, 
merely for the gratification of the personal vanity 
of a weak and capricious sovereign, but, at the advice 
of his own ministers, as a serious political measure 
to emphasise, not only to his subjects but to his 
Chinese and Japanese neighbours, the complete inde- 
pendence which Korea was now supposed to enjoy 
in all her affairs both foreign and domestic. The 
condition of the country, the disorganisation of the 
corrupt and incompetent Government, the position 
of the King himself, fresh from his retreat in a 
foreign Legation and still leaning on foreign support, 
rendered the address in which his ministers urged 
him to the step pathetic in the light in which it 
endeavoured to describe both King and country : 

Your Majesty's enlightened thoughts, chivalrous disposition, and 
grandeur of wisdom surpass the hundred monarchs of the World. 
Your natural character equals the workings of heaven above and 
earth beneath, your greatness and goodness have reached Holy 
Light. Since your Coronation your goodness and beneficent influence 
have been felt everywhere for three decades and your ruling has 
been in accord with the spirit of the classics. Of late years the 
country experienced troubles and dangers but through Your 
Majesty's goodness the foundation of the country became again 
secure and the multitudinous confusions gave way to orderliness and 



344 THE STORY OF KOREA 

righteousness. The future of the dynasty has been transferred to a 
solid rock and prosperity has replaced anxiety and worry. The 
establishment of independence and maintenance of freedom are 
solely due to the merciful help of Heaven and the continuation of 
your glorious career." 

/( 

The King yielded to the "six armies and the 
ten thousand citizens who were clamouring at the 
palace gates," and in October, 1907, was once more 
crowned with great ceremony, this time as Emperor. 
He was speedily congratulated by the Czar on his 
new dignity, and Russian influence continued to be 
the directing factor in all his affairs. 

With the assumption of an Imperial crown the 
King changed the name of what had been his kingdom 
to that of the Empire of Tai-han, great Han. The 
name adopted by the first king of the Wang dynasty 
in 935, when the peninsula wlas unified under one 
crown, as the official designation of his kingdom was 
Korai, the name of the most northern of the three 
old kingdoms which originally shared the peninsula 
between them, and also of the far distant district 
in Manchuria where the remote ancestor of the kings 
of old Korai was born, and it is from this that the 
name by which Europeans have always known the 
peninsula, Korea, is derived. When Ni Taijo formed 
the second royal dynasty in 1392, he reverted to 
the still older title of Chosen, the designation of the 
land colonised by Ki Tse eleven hundred years before 
Christ, and Korea was always officially known to 
both Japanese and Chinese as Chosen down to our 
own time. A popular designation of it, almost as old 
in its remote origin as either Korai or Chosen, both 
among Chinese and Japanese as well as among its 
own people, was " the Eight Circuits of Keirin." 
The " Eight Circuits " are, of course, the eight pro- 
vinces into which the unified kingdom was divided 
by King Wang, and which continue to the present 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 345 

day. Keirin (pleasantly sounding as it is in Japanese, 
its literal translation is the rather prosaic and un- 
meaning one of " cock-forest ") was originally a 
name of Silla, which was subsequently extended to 
Korai. Its origin is found in the following story : 
Talha, the fifth King of the Sillan dynasty (58- 
81 A.D.), once, in the ninth year of his reign, heard 
a cock repeatedly crowing through a night in early 
spring in the forest that lay to the west of his 
castle, and, wondering what it would portend, he 
sent an officer in the morning to inquire into it. 
The officer found a white cock of glorious plumage 
still crowing, and hanging from a branch of a tree 
beneath which the cock sat was a golden casket. 
He reported what he had seen, and then the King 
had the casket brought to him and opened, and in- 
side was found an infant boy of wondrous beauty. 
The King was childless. He was delighted with 
what he had found, saying that Providence had 
sent him an heir. Thenceforward the forest was 
called " Keirin," and the name was subsequently 
extended to the whole of Silla, and still later to 
the peninsula, while a white cock became an heraldic 
emblem of Korea just as the chrysanthemum is one 
of Japan. Before the three kingdoms existed, coeval 
with the earliest Korai and Chosen, were the three 
Han or districts into which, as already told in a 
previous chapter, the south of the peninsula was 
divided in the earliest days. In place of the three 
Han, all Korea had become one great Han, and it 
was of this Tai Han that the erstwhile King was ac- 
claimed as Emperor in 1897. The kingdom of Korai 
existed for four centuries, that of Chosen for over 
five, but the new empire was destined for a brief and 
troublous life of only thirteen years. 1 

Twice the Japanese attempted to secure their own 
1 Vide note to list of illustrations. 



346 THE STORY OF KOREA 

position in Korea vis-a-vis Russia, first by the con- 
vention negotiated at St. Petersburg in 1896, and 
second by that negotiated at Tokio in 1898, known 
from the names of their signatories, the first as the 
Yamagata-Lobanoff, and the second as the Nishi- 
Rosen, convention. All conventions were in vain. 
Russia pursued her own course regardless of all treaty 
obligations, obtained and held control of the military 
and financial systems of Korea, and, while she had 
agreed to respect Korea's territorial integrity and 
not to obstruct the development of commercial and 
industrial relations with Japan, she was rapidly 
securing for herself concessions which placed the 
most valuable resources of Korea at her disposal. 
Her minister at Seoul was always in the confidence 
of the King, and, backed both by the gratitude which 
the King owed for the protection given to him in 
his time of peril and by the prestige of Russia, was 
practically able to obtain all that he asked. It 
seemed only a question of time when Korea should 
become in name as she already appeared to be in 
fact, a Russian province, when a series of incidents 
occurred that were as insignificant in their origin 
as they were momentous in their results. 

Among the many concessions granted by the 
Korean King when a refugee in the Russian 
Legation, in 1896, was one to a Russian subject 
for cutting timber in the valley of the River Yalu, 
on the north-western frontier. This concession was 
a valuable one, in view of the building of the trans- 
Siberian Railway, the immense number of sleepers 
that would be required, and the rich forests of the 
Yalu valley, which could furnish the material, while 
the river itself afforded easy and cheap facilities for 
transport from the forests to the borders of Man- 
churia. Members of the Imperial family of Russia 
and high officials in Eastern Siberia took large 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 347 

pecuniary interests in it, so that the concessionaire 
became assured of strong political and official support 
whenever the time came at which it suited him to 
make use of it. It was never made public, and 
nothing was heard of it till the summer of 1903, 
when Chinese labourers from Manchuria began to fell 
timber on an extensive scale under Russian direction ; 
and the labourers were soon followed by soldiers, to 
protect them from the mounted Chinese bandits that 
infested Manchuria immediately to the north of the 
Yalu. The sale of land to foreigners outside the 
limits of the recognised settlements was forbidden 
by Korean law, but a large tract was purchased by 
the Russian timber concessionaires at Yong Ampho, 
a Korean port on the Yalu, about fifteen miles from 
its mouth, from the Korean owners. Substantial 
dwellings, sawmills, and other buildings were erected 
on it, the river frontage was embanked, and every 
intention was manifested of founding a large settle- 
ment. A little farther up the river, on the Man- 
churian side, is the Chinese port of Antung. Yong 
Ampho is said to be one of the ten best harbours 
in Korea. If the possession of Yong Ampho was 
combined with that of Antung 1 , which, like the rest 
of Manchuria, was at the time in Russian occupa- 
tion, the River Yalu could be closed to all approach 
from the sea, and the Russians, with open contempt 
for both Japanese and Korean protests, gave every 
indication of their intentions. A fort was erected 
on th£ highest part of the acquired land in Korea, 
guns were mounted, and a garrison established in 
it. A second fort was commenced on the Man- 
churian side, on a cliff commanding the river, a 
few miles farther up. The Korean Government was 
awakened by these proceedings to the danger which 
threatened their northern frontier and their north- 
western province. An old prophecy foretold that 



348 THE STORY OF KOREA 

when the Tartar was in the north and a shrimp in 
the south and white pines grew in the valley of 
the Yalu the end of Korean independence would be 
near. The configuration of Japan is supposed to 
resemble a shrimp, and Japanese settlements were 
now all over the south — at Fusan, Masampo, and 
Seoul. The Russian Tartar was establishing himself 
in the north and lining the valleys of the Yalu with 
white telegraph posts made of pine, and all com- 
bined to signify the realisation of the prophecy. 
Korea was still under the thumb of Russia, the King 
(now the Emperor), both in gratitude and fear, sub- 
servient in all things to the masterful Russian 
minister at Seoul ; but both King and Government, 
pressed by the Japanese minister, who was supported 
by the diplomatic representatives of the other powers 
at Seoul, especially by those of England and the 
United States, plucked up courage to send orders 
to the local Governor of Wiju, the most important 
frontier town of Korea and the capital of the pre- 
fecture, to stop the illegal sale of real estate. The 
Governor reported that the Russian methods rendered 
him powerless, that the Russians simply took 
possession of the land in the first instance, with or 
without the consent of the native owners, and went 
through the form of buying it afterwards. The 
Russian minister in Seoul, in answer to the ,feeble 
protests of the Government, declared that the 
" valley of the Yalu " included not only the line 
of the river itself throughout its entire length, but 
all its tributaries and all the adjoining districts, and 
that a concession to cut timber implied the privilege 
of exercising every operation incidental to it, in no 
matter how remote a degree. He claimed, there- 
fore, the right to construct railways or roads, erect 
telegraphs, acquire land for building purposes, and 
to take whatever military measures appeared to be 



MODERN KOREA— 1884-1905 349 

prudent for the protection of the Russian settlers 
engaged in all or any of these works. He claimed, 
in fact, the fullest military control and very exten- 
sive proprietorial rights over the entire north-west 
frontier. 

The Japanese Government was profoundly moved 
by the Russian proceedings and claim, recognising 
that if both were permitted to pass without resistance 
they would form stepping-stones for further extension 
of the Russian sphere of influence that might end in 
the absorption of the whole peninsula. She had 
before her many incidents of Russian methods and 
of Russia's cynical disregard of the most solemn 
treaty obligations when it suited her to break them. 
Russia had already in her present action violated 
in their most essential items both the conventions 
she had made with Japan for the regulation of their 
mutual interests in Korea. She had stationed troops 
in Korean dominions, though they were not necessary 
for the protection of existing settlements ; and she 
had acquired land in places not open to the residence 
of foreigners in defiance of the provisions of Korean 
law, in both respects outraging the sovereignty of 
Korea as an independent kingdom, which she had 
solemnly bound herself to recognise. Japan tried in 
vain to rouse the Korean Government to take steps 
which would throw some moral obstacles in the way 
of Russia's encroachment, but neither the King nor 
his ministers would go beyond their first feeble pro- 
tests, and they blindly and fatuously yielded to all 
the dictates of the Russian minister. Japan then 
tried to safeguard her own interests by offering to 
Russia a free hand, as far as she was concerned, in 
Manchuria, provided the safety and independence of 
Korea were adequately guaranteed ; and she ex- 
hausted every step that was possible in patient 
diplomacy in her endeavour to procure Russia's 



350 THE STORY OF KOREA 

assent to the guarantees which she considered essen- 
tial. Russia treated her well-meant and courteous 
efforts with offensive indifference till her patience 
was exhausted, and the Russo-Japanese War of 
1904-5 began. Its result as completely put an end 
to Russia's further interference in Korea as the 
China -Japan War had done that of China ten years 
before. By the second clause of the Treaty of Peace 
which closed the war Russia pledged herself to : 

"recognise the preponderant interest, from political, military, 
and economic points of view, of Japan in the Empire of Korea, and 
not to oppose any measure for its government, protection, or control 
that Japan might deem it necessary to take in Korea in conjunction 
with the Korean Government." 

By two great wars Japan had freed Korea from all 
interference on the part of the two great neigh- 
bouring Empires, and she was now herself at liberty 
to start on the task of the regeneration of the unhappy 
kingdom which had been the ostensible object of all 
her interference in its affairs for thirty years. Korea 
henceforth stood towards Japan in the same relation 
as that of Egypt to Great Britain since 1882, and the 
task before her was very similar to that which faced 
Great Britain — to reform a Government rotten with 
corruption to its very core, and to elevate a people 
reduced by ages of oppression and spoliation to the 
lowest abysses of unrelieved misery and hopeless 
poverty. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE, 1905-IO 

Japan entered on the war with Russia with absolute 
confidence in her own success, in so far as the future 
relative positions of the two Empires in the Far East 
were concerned. She had neither design nor hope to 
injure Russia as a great European Power, but her 
long preparations, carefully and minutely made 
during ten years, always with the same goal in view, 
her confidence in the skill of her officers and the 
devoted bravery of her men, and the exhaustive in- 
formation as to the conditions of the Russian Asiatic 
defences that she had obtained through her secret 
service — the most wonderfully organised in the world 
— left her with not a particle of doubt as to the result 
of her campaigns in Korea and Manchuria. The 
subordinate officers and private soldiers had no less 
confidence in themselves than their Government and 
generals. Some of them had seen, all had heard of, 
the conduct of the Russian Asiatic troops during the 
Boxer troubles in 1900, when they indulged in a 
perfect orgy of slaughter and rapine, and their dis- 
cipline, drill, organisation, and skill in arms were all 
alike regarded with utter contempt by the Japanese 
soldiers. The object of the war was to free Korea 
from the ever-present danger of absorption by 
Russia. For Manchuria, Japan then cared but little. 
She would have been perfectly willing to have left 

351 



352 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Russia a free hand there, provided she was in return 
left equally free in Korea. But her own national 
safety, even her existence, depended on Korea's con- 
tinuance as an independent kingdom, or, failing that, 
her incorporation in the Japanese Empire. 

All Korea's history in recent years left no hope that 
she could ever reform herself. With the example of 
Japan before her, with all that she had learned from, 
her own intercourse with European nations, her 
Government had continued to be immerged in cor- 
ruption, to be ruled by sordid intrigue, and to be 
influenced only by selfish considerations of class 
interests. They had given no evidence of patriotism, 
honesty, or capacity. They had adopted reforms 
that were forced upon them, but were ready to abandon 
them the moment the pressure was removed. They 
had helplessly cast themselves, in turn, on the pro- 
tection of China, Japan, and Russia, and never 
afforded any prospect that the time would come 
when they could stand alone, able to govern 
their own people with justice and mercy or to< 
defend themselves against foreign aggression. With 
such a Government strong measures were necessary, 
and Japan, once she was free and untrammelled, lost 
no time in showing to the world that she meant toi 
take them. Japan, as we have said, had no doubts 
as to the ultimate issue of her land campaigns, and 
in the very first month of the war she assured herself 
of the command of the sea, but before even the 
Russian army had been driven from the Yalu the first 
of many so-called agreements was concluded between 
the Governments of Korea and Japan. The former 
pledged itself to adopt the advice of the latter in 
regard to the improvement of its administration, and 
the latter undertook the responsibility of maintaining 
peace, both internal and external, and " guaranteed 
the safety and repose of the Imperial House " and 




p 

o 
w 

« 
W 
Q 
O 



W 



*5J 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 353 

" the independence and territorial integrity of 
Korea." Under this agreement Japan resumed the 
position of administrative adviser, which was all that 
she had held during the brief regime of Count Inouye 
in 1895. She w r as to give Korea advice, but, theo- 
retically, Korea was still free to adopt or reject it as 
she pleased. When Japan's " free hand " in Korea, 
her " paramount political, military, and economical 
interests, ,, were formally recognised by Russia in the 
Portsmouth Treaty of September, 1905, and by 
England, in its Treaty of Alliance of August in the 
same year, the first was soon followed by further 
agreements, the last of which, signed in July, 1907, 
converted. Japan's advisory into a directing position, 
and gave to her the control of Korea's finance and 
diplomacy, of her postal and telegraph services, and, 
finally, of the whole of her internal affairs. The 
Korean Army was disbanded as useless and hopeless, 
a source of expense to the country, and formidable 
only to its own peaceful citizens. A Japanese 
Resident-General was appointed in 1905, and the 
agreement of 1907 vested him with what was prac- 
tically sovereign authority, giving him complete con- 
trol of all legislative and executive functions and 
the right of appointing and dismissing officials on 
his sole responsibility. Japanese Residents were also 
nominated at the principal ports, who, in like ways, 
virtually became the Governors of their respective 
districts. Korean ministers were still the nominal 
chiefs of all the principal Government departments, 
but in each they had Japanese officials as their vice- 
ministers and Japanese technical advisers were em- 
ployed in every bureau. The disbandment of ,the 
Korean Army was followed by several local risings, 
in which the disbanded soldiers drilled and led the 
insurgents ; and profiting, as their ancestors had done 
when fighting against Hideyoshi, by the facilities for 

23 



354 THE STORY OF KOREA 

guerilla warfare which the natural conditions of the 
country afforded, they offered such a stout resistance 
to the Japanese troops sent against them that they 
were not suppressed till after many months, with 
great loss in killed and wounded to themselves and 
substantial loss to the Japanese. 

Japan testified her desire to use her new powers; 
to the very utmost advantage by nominating Marquis 
Ito, the great statesman to whose constructive genius 
she herself owed so much, as the first Resident- 
General ; and he, with characteristic energy and 
thoroughness, started at once on cleansing the Augean 
stable which he found before him, in which the foulest 
stall of corruption was, perhaps, the Court itself. 
In taxation, in the administration of justice, in the 
police service, in every sphere of national and local 
administration, selfish and dishonest parasites of the 
Court, acting in the name of the King, " who saw 
nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing," were casting 
their fatal blight on the nation, with no thought of 
anything but their own enrichment. The entire 
administration of the Court, its property and 
revenues, was taken in charge by Japanese officials ; 
the Court and State were differentiated, so that con- 
fusion between the Royal and State revenues no 
longer existed ; a Cabinet was formed on the model 
of that in Japan, in which the head of each depart- 
ment is responsible for the efficient conduct of all 
business that falls within his jurisdiction. An 
elaborate scheme of local government was adopted, 
under which considerable powers of local taxation 
and administration were left to the authorities pf 
each district. The judicial and executive functions 
were, under the Korean Government, vested in the 
same officials. They were now separated and inde- 
pendent courts of justice established, presided over, 
both in the central and district courts, by Japanese 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 355 

judges, and a beginning was made in codifying the 
laws. Hitherto the administration of justice had 
been entirely at the will of executive officials, and 
their decisions were invariably given to the party 
who offered the highest bribe. Torture was an inci- 
dent in every criminal trial, and not only the accused 
but the witnesses were subjected to it. The prisons 
were infernos of human suffering, destitute of every 
semblance of sanitation, in which the prisoners often 
died of hunger or cold ; where punishments of 
flogging, so severe as often to cause permanent 
mutilation or death, were of daily occurrence ; where 
the death penalty — inflicted for very trivial crimes — 
was carried out in slow and agonising forms of 
strangulation or poisoning ; and where no distinction 
was made between the convicted felon and the prisoner 
awaiting trial, between the professional criminal whose 
whole life had been an unbroken career of murder 
and robbery and the pilferer who had yielded to a 
momentary temptation. All these abuses were re- 
formed with an unsparing hand. Jails were estab- 
lished pn the model of those in Japan, where the 
punishment and reformation of criminals have been 
elevated into a science, the guiding principle of which 
is that, while the guilty must be punished, his 
reformation is always to be kept in view, so that 
when his freedom comes he may be a useful member 
of society. Along with the new prisons, steps were 
taken to organise an efficient police-force, and 
training schools were established in which the prin- 
cipal details of their duties were taught to candidates . 
Schools of every grade — primary, high, normal, 
technical, and industrial — were opened ; and though 
it w T as not found practicable to make education com- 
pulsory at first, and great prejudices against Japanese 
teachers had to be overcome before parents could 
be induced to trust their children to them, the advan- 



356 THE STORY OF KOREA 

tages of the new schools are now being steadily 
learned by the people, and the numbers of the pupils 
show large annual increases. Hospitals and water- 
works have been established in the great cities, both 
in accordance with the most advanced principles of 
medical and engineering science, and both are con- 
tributing to the improved health and sanitation of 
the people. 

The last result of Prince Ito's administration which 
we need mention is the improvement of the internal 
communications. Korea, under its own Government, 
possessed only one great highway that was worthy 
of the name of a road — that which led from the 
capital to the north-west frontier, which was con- 
structed mainly for the benefit of the annual Chinese 
embassy. Save that, the roads were merely bridle- 
paths, unfitted for either military or commercial 
traffic, which, at the very best, permitted the passing 
of two laden oxen. The construction of new roads, 
well laid and drained, with wide spaces on both sides, 
was at once commenced, and the work is being 
steadily pushed forward. The inception of railways 
in Korea was the result of American enterprise, but 
it passed at a very early stage into the hands of 
Japanese ; and all that exist are now under the 
control and management of the Imperial Railway 
Board at Tokio. The total length now in actual 
operation is 637 miles of a standard gauge of 4 feet 
8J inches, the two principal lines being from Fusan 
to Seoul, with a branch to Chemulpo, and from 
Seoul to Wiju on the frontier, these two lines pro- 
viding a continuous route from the south-eastern to 
the north-western extremity of the peninsula. At the 
south they are connected with the railways of Japan 
by steamers which run twice daily from both Fusan 
and Shimonoseki, and on the north only the com- 
pletion of a bridge across the Yalu is awaited to 




p 
o 



o 

o 
w 

K 
H 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 357 

connect Seoul by rail with Europe. 1 All have been 
entirely constructed by Japanese engineers with 
Japanese capital. In the fifteen years that have 
elapsed since Japan acquired the possession of 
Formosa she has done more for the material advance- 
ment of the island and the development of its great 
resources than the Chinese had achieved during 
nearly three centuries. In the four years which have 
elapsed since she acquired effective control of the 
administration of Korea she has already accomplished 
more permanent reforms than all that Korea did of 
herself, with her able European advisers, in her pre- 
vious experience, during twenty-five years, of Western 
civilisation. 

The particulars we have given are only an index 
of the great work which Prince I to had already 
accomplished when he fell by an assassin's hand on 
October 26, 1909. In giving all credit due to 
him for the material benefits which he conferred on 
Korea, and for the reforms which he made in her 
political and social system, that which is no less due 
to one who preceded him must not be forgotten. 
When the administration of the Korean Customs, 
while the kingdom was still independent, was 
entrusted to the officials of the great Customs 
Service of China, Mr. McLeavy Brown, 2 a British 
subject, of Irish birth and education, who had had 
long experience in China, was appointed Chief Com- 
missioner in Korea. He soon afterwards united with 
that the office of Controller of the National Treasury, 
and he served Korea for over ten yeans in the dual 
capacity. Working in the face of the opposition, 
not only of a corrupt and bigpted Ministry, but of 

1 At the time of writing only a light military railway connects the 
frontier with Mukden, but the permanent line will be completed 
and open to traffic in a few months. 

2 Now Sir John McLeavy Brown. 



358 THE STORY OF KOREA 

European diplomatists and consuls who were seeking 
concessions and contracts for their own citizens and 
(political jadvantages for their countries, and who, 
to gain their own selfish ends, were not ashamed to 
pander to the worst vices of the Government and to 
offer a passive obstruction to all reform, without the 
prestige and active support of a great and success- 
ful military power at his back, he not only raised 
Korean finance and currency from the abyss of chaos 
and corruption into which they had been brought by 
dishonest officials, and effected a great retrenchment 
in the national expenditure, but he transformed the 
whole appearance of the capital by the municipal 
reforms which he initiated and carried through. Its 
streets were drained, and, freed from the obstruction 
of pedlars' booths which had formerly choked them, 
they became broad, picturesque, sanitary thorough- 
fares, instead of foul lanes, offensive in their aspect 
and conditions both to sight and smell. They are 
now further dignified by the public buildings, the 
homes of the various Government departments, which 
have been erected by the Japanese with a lavish 
hand ; but the renovation of the streets was 
finished and electric tramways and lighting, tele- 
graphs and telephones, were all factors in the life 
of the capital long before the Residency-General of 
Japan was thought of. Some of these were initiated 
during Japan's brief period of domination in 1895 ; 
but they were speedily permitted to lapse, and their 
revival and accomplishment were entirely due to Mr. 
McLeavy Brown. 

The Tai Won Kun ended his long life of cruelty 
and conspiracy in 1898. The Queen was murdered 
in 1895. In the same year the ascendancy of Japan 
temporarily ended, and that of China had closed for 
ever in 1894. The King was thus freed from the 
principal controlling influences of his life, and in the 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 359 

revulsion which accompanied his restoration to liberty 
and power after his imprisonment in his own palace 
and in the Russian Legation he reverted to many of 
the worst abuses of the throne, and became the tool 
of the party or adventurer that was the last to gain 
his ear. The dead Queen's place was taken by a 
lady who had been a palace attendant, and who, 
prior to her entry to the palace, is said to have had 
a very varied career and many lords. Whatever her, 
past had been, she acquired over the King an 
influence hardly less than that of the murdered 
Queen, which she used with the most selfish un- 
scrupulousness . 

One of the principal advisers of the King was the 
chair coolie who had helped the Queen in her flight 
from the palace in 1882. The Queen did not forget 
him when she resumed her throne. He received a 
post in the palace, and, once there, his abilities gradu- 
ally raised him in the favour of the King, till at last 
he received the post of Minister of Finance. In 
that capacity he earned the royal favour and gratitude 
by the ingenuity which he showed in providing, by 
new taxes and a clever manipulation of the currency, 
the means for the indulgence of his master's whims 
and pleasures. The King was completely under the 
influence of both lady and adviser, and the national 
interests were the very last consideration to enter 
into the minds of either. 

Every new limit that was placed on his former 
arbitrary powers was viewed by the King with dis- 
favour, and was opposed with the whole strength of 
the Court. One last despairing effort was made to 
stem the flowing tide of progress and to maintain 
the country in its old position as a preserve for 
a favoured class. Impotent against the strong will 
and arm of the great Japanese statesman and his 
adjutants, the King endeavoured to obtain the help 



360 THE STORY OF KOREA 

of Western powers. In 1907 an embassy was sent to 
the United States and Europe to lay Korea's plight 
before the representatives of the great powers, who 
in that year were assembled at the Hague Con- 
ference, and to solicit their intervention against 
Japan. It was hopeless from the first. No power 
cared to interfere now that Russia was driven from 
the field. None had such material interests in Korea 
as would induce it to enter into even a diplomatic 
controversy with Japan, and the lesson which Russia 
has received will be sufficient for all time to prevent 
any ^Western power venturing to interfere in what 
Japan considers her own peculiar field, unless driven 
to do so by very strong considerations of national 
welfare or honour. The embassy returned, and its 
only results were that the Emperor was forced to 
abdicate in favour of his son and the conclusion of 
the new and drastic convention of July, 1907, to 
which we have already referred. The Japanese were 
determined to brook no more opposition, and they 
were less likely to receive it from a young Sovereign, 
new to his dignity and unaccustomed to the exercise 
of authority, than from one who had reigned both 
as Pope and temporal Sovereign for more than forty 
years, in whom the exercise of an unfettered 
autocracy had become second nature. On July 19, 
1907, the Emperor laid down his crown, and [his 
long, unhappy reign came to an end — the reign which 
commenced with the extermination of Christians 
within his dominions and ended with these dominions 
in the firm grasp of his traditional enemy — the enemy 
which for fifteen hundred years had been a scourge to 
his country. The new Emperor's reigti was destined 
to be brief. Everything 1 had been tending towards 
one unavoidable end, and on August 22, 1910, the 
last step was taken and Korea was formally annexed 
to the Japanese Empire. The dynasty of sovereigns, 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 361 

which had continued in an unbroken line from 1392, 
came to an end with the independence of their 
country, whose national traditions and history had 
extended over four thousand years, whose founda- 
tion as a kingdom was coeval with that of the 
Assyrian Empire ; and the two last living representa- 
tives of the dynasty exchanged their positions as 
Imperial dignitaries for those of princes and 
pensioners of Japan. 

Japan claimed to have honestly done her best to 
render practicable the fulfilment both of agreements 
and treaties in which she had guaranteed, at first 
specifically and afterwards impliedly, that the con- 
tinued existence of Korea as an independent kingdom 
would be maintained, but she had found the task 
impossible. All her "earnest and laborious work 
of reforms in the administration of Korea " had not 
made the existing system of government in that 
country entirely equal to the duty of preserving public 
order and tranquillity, and in addition " a spirit of 
suspicion and misgiving dominated the whole 
peninsula." 

" In their solicitude to put an end to disturbing conditions the 
Japanese Government made an arrangement in 1905 for establishing 
a protectorate over Korea and they have ever since been assiduously 
engaged in works of reform, looking forward to the consummation 
of a desired end. But they have failed to find in the regime of a 
protectorate sufficient hope for the realisation of the object which 
they had in view, and a condition of unrest and disquietude still 
prevails throughout the whole peninsula. In these circumstances 
the necessity of introducing fundamental changes in the system of 
government in Korea has become entirely manifest and an earnest 
and careful examination of the Korean problem has convinced the 
Japanese Government that the regime of a protectorate can not be 
made to adapt itself to the actual condition of affairs in Korea, and 
that the responsibilities devolving upon Japan for the due adminis- 
tration of the country can not be justly fulfilled without the complete 
annexation of Korea to the Empire." 



362 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Such were the terms in which Japan justified her 
action to the world. It was taken, not for the grati- 
fication of the stratocratic ambition of a militant 
power, but to secure peace in the Far East, and the 
advantages of progressive and civilised government 
to a people whose own rulers have proved them- 
selves unfitted for their duties. Japan had in Korea 
since 1905, as will have been gathered from pre- 
ceding pages in this volume, the same field as Great 
Britain had in Egypt after 1882. Japan had by 
her own confession failed where Great Britain suc- 
ceeded. The Egyptian Court and Government were 
only a degree less corrupt than that of Korea, the 
people only a degree less serf -like and oppressed. 
Under the British protectorate the Court and Govern- 
ment of Egypt have been purified, and her people 
converted into industrious and self-respecting citizens, 
whose nationalistic spirit has been fostered, not stifled, 
by their reformers, who now claim to be entitled 
to all the privileges of a self -governing, constitutional 
community. 

Japan confessed that the attainment of these ends in 
Korea was not yet even within view at the time of the 
annexation. She has had, however, to overcome diffi- 
culties and remedy mistakes of which Great Britain 
had no experience in Egypt. She was faced with 
the legacy of hatred bequeathed by Japanese pirates 
in the Middle Ages, and by Hideyoshi's ruthless 
armies, which gave Japanese soldiers a place in 
Korean hearts similar to that which the Cromwellian 
held in those of the Irish peasants, a place which 
to the present day makes " the curse of Cromwell 
on you," the deepest malediction which the Irishman 
can utter in the worst transports* of his deepest 
passion. No British official of high rank in Egypt 
ever became the willing tool or the instigator oir 
partner of native conspirators and assassins. Great 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 363 

Britain did not permit Egypt to be overrun by the 
scum of her own population, and the timid, helpless 
fellaheen to be terrified, beaten, and plundered by 
bullies and cheats from the worst slums of the great 
cities of the United Kingdom, nor did she permit the 
empty phrase of " military necessity " to be a justi- 
fication for the wholesale spoliation of lands and 
houses by her soldiers and officials. All this Japan 
has had to answer for in Korea. Writers whose 
honesty and credibility are beyond all suspicion have 
over and over again described the tyrannical 
oppression and ruthless spoliation to which peaceful 
Korean citizens have been wantonly subjected, not 
only by Japanese adventurers but by soldiers and 
officials. Of these incidents or of the general conduct 
of Japanese soldiers or settlers in Korea, the present 
writer can say nothing of his own knowledge, as his 
latest direct experience of Korea is two decades old. 
But there are few incidents that have been described 
as having occurred in Korea the parallel of which 
the present writer did not see or hear of during 
the early military occupation of Formosa, and there 
can be no reason to doubt that what occurred in 
Formosa was repeated in Korea, even if we had not 
authoritative testimony to that effect. The Japanese 
have redeemed their initial errors in Formosa, and 
under their rule it is becoming a prosperous colony ; 
and its inhabitants of Chinese descent, more alien 
in race, language, customs, and ideas to the Japanese 
than are the Koreans, have, we are told, forgotten 
the cruelty to which they were at first subjected, and 
under just and strict government are becoming 
orderly and contented citizens of the Japanese 
Empire. May not we hope that a similar success will 
ere many years have lapsed be achieved in Korea, 
and that the immense material benefits which the 
Japanese have already conferred on the country will 



364 THE STORY OF KOREA 

be followed by the heart-whole conciliation of the 
people? 

The Japanese have one great weapon in their hands 
which has never failed them. The word and will 
of their Emperor are sacred. His commands are 
received with all the reverential obedience that we 
theoretically render to those of the Decalogue. The 
worst ruffian among his subjects assumes lamblike 
mildness when the Emperor declares that his Imperial 
honour is concerned. There is enough of the old 
leaven still left in the samurai-born official to induce 
him to contemplate the hara-kiri of his forefathers 
if he fails in carrying out his Emperor's wishes. 
Fifteen years ago there was an extraordinary epi- 
demic among the lowest Japanese classes at the great 
shipping ports of Japan of wanton assaults on 
Europeans. Even ladies were often the victims. 
Many of the perpetrators were coolies who had 
followed the armies through the China War, and 
carried back with them 1 to their own country the 
habits that Kirke's soldiers did from Tangier. It 
was "brought to the Emperor's own knowledge, and 
an Imperial rescript at once appeared notifying his 
Majesty's disapproval of such acts. The assaults 
ceased at once. Twelve years ago European resi- 
dents in Japan viewed with many gloomy forebodings 
their subjection to the jurisdiction of Japanese 
officials on the abolition of the old treaties, and with 
their previous experience of the spirit which actuates 
the lower grade of Japanese officials in discrimi- 
nating between foreigners and their own countrymen, 
they had only too good ground for their fears. On 
the day on which the old treaties died, an Imperial 
rescript appeared, proclaiming that it was his 
Majesty's earnest wish that his officials of every 
degree should act equitably and administer justice 
impartially as between subjects and strangers, that 



THE JAPANESE PROTECTORATE 365 

all should enjoy equally the advantages of good 
government. None of the forebodings of the 
European residents in Japan has been realised, 
and they have continued to live and trade in 
Japan in perfect confidence of security of liberty 
and property. When Japan took another great 
step in her national career, when by one stroke 
of the pen she added ten million people to her 
citizens, and established herself as a continental as 
well as an insular power, another Imperial rescript 
appeared in which his Majesty declared that " all 
Koreans under his sway shall enjoy growing pros- 
perity and welfare, and be assured of repose and 
security," and called upon " all his officials and 
authorities to fulfil their duties in appreciation of 
his will." 

This rescript may have the effect of its prede- 
cessors and herald the dawn of a new era in a 
country which hitherto has known nothing but un- 
happiness. The Japanese have a great task before 
them before they can remedy the errors which they 
have made in Korea during the past thirty years, and 
let the curtain of oblivion fall over the many glaring 
misdeeds which have too often covered their adminis- 
tration with shame. The present writer believes that 
they will show themselves equal to their task, that 
they will prove not unworthy of the high position 
which they hold as the equal of the greatest Christian 
powers of the world, and that they will in deference 
to the commands of their Emperor bring all the 
blessings of good and honest government to a people 
who have been throughout all their history the most 
misgoverned on earth. 






CHAPTER XVII 

TRADE AND INDUSTRY 

The estimates of the population of Korea given by 
the best European authorities, even in recent years, 
diverge very widely, their figures varying so much 
as from seventeen to six million people, and it must 
be acknowledged that all the available information 
in regard to it is, as yet, very far from definite. 
An attempt to take a national census was made by 
the police department, under the directions of its 
Japanese advisers, in the year 1906, and the result 
of their investigations showed that there were in that 
year 2,333,037 households, occupied by 9,781,671 
people, and this is the nearest attempt at accuracy 
that has as yet been made. The figures are neither 
exhaustive nor authentic. They do not include the 
inhabitants of the islands, some of which are very 
thickly populated, nor of the remote mountain dis- 
tricts in the north, while even in those districts in 
which the census was taken the officials were in 
almost every rural community thwarted by the 
opposition of the people themselves. When we read 
of the suspicion with which census inquiries were 
received by some of the lower classes in England in 
the present year, it is not surprising to know that 
in a country like Korea, where the people had been 
taught for generations to consider themselves only 
as instruments for providing 1 the luxuries and necessi- 
ties of life for those above them, the census was 

366 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 367 

regarded merely as new machinery for further taxa- 
tion, and that it was therefore resisted to the utmost, 
and the necessary information withheld as far as 
possible. The peculiar social conditions of Korea sug- 
gested a further obstacle on the part of the native local 
authorities . They were anxious to conceal the number 
of full-grown men in their districts available to them 
for the purposes of forced labour or for illegitimate 
taxation, and they added their opposition to that of 
the ignorant peasants. Such as they are, the figures 
obtained by this census are the best that can be given, 
and must be accepted until the time when the inquiries 
that are now being prosecuted by the Japanese police 
furnish us with others that are more precise. They 
afford no information as to the classification of the 
people by rank, occupation, age, or sex, and on these 
points we are still reduced to vague generalities. 
The Yangban, the unproductive drones of the nation, 
are said to comprise one-fifth of the whole population. 
Of the balance, nine-tenths are said to be engaged 
in agriculture, and the males in all classes are said 
to exceed the females in number. 

The figures, assuming that they are approximately 
correct, furnish a strong comment on the results of 
the policy of national isolation. The Koreans are a 
strongly passionate people, and marriage at an early 
age is universal among them. They do not live 
entirely on rice as do the majority of Asiatics, not 
only those in the tropics but even the inhabitants of 
Manchuria and Hokkaido, where the winters are 
arctic. Their diet is, to a considerable extent, 
provided by the animal world, while the seas around 
their coasts, badly exploited as they are, furnish 
them with an unfailing supply of fish. In normal 
years their supply of food, both from the vegetable 
and animal worlds, is abundant and cheap. There 
is, therefore, every economic reason — early marriage, 



368 THE STORY OF KOREA 

low standards of life, and cheap food — which should 
have caused their numbers to increase at as great a 
ratio as the most prolific of other nations. But, un- 
fortunately, all years were not normal. Their history 
shows that few decades passed unmarked by severe 
famines, the result of harvests destroyed by drought or 
excessive rain, and while they lasted (one is recorded 
to have been continuous for seven years) the people 
died wholesale. Even so late as 1872 they are said 
to have perished in tens of thousands from hunger, 
and cholera and typhus were always ready to follow 
on the track of famine and complete the work which 
it had begun. All early censuses (one is authentically 
recorded as having been taken so early as the .fifteenth 
century) must have been even more unreliable than 
that of 1906 ; but if a rough estimate of the whole 
population can be formed from the strength of the 
armies which Korea put into the field without diffi- 
culty during the Japanese and Manchu invasions, she 
must have had a population at the close of the six- 
teenth and in the early part of the seventeenth 
centuries at least equal to that of the present. 
Famine and its attendant epidemics checked its 
natural increase — famine that might always have been 
avoided had the people been free to procure food 
from their neighbours when their own harvests failed 
them. 

While agriculture is the chief national industry, 
occupying between six and seven millions of the 
whole population, and both soil and climate, under 
normal conditions, give the most generous rewards to 
the labour of the husbandmen, only one -tenth of 
the peninsula is said to be cultivated. Natural 
difficulties are to some extent responsible for this. 
The forest-clad mountains, by which the north-eastern 
provinces are covered, render extensive farming^ im- 
possible, and all Korea is a land of hills formidable 




SPADE-WORK. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p, 36S. 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 369 

to the plough. But it is less so than Japan ; and 
while everywhere in Japan, even on the small out- 
lying islands, the hills are seen terraced to their 
summits with highly cultivated, garden -like patches, 
those in Korea are left bare and unused, denuded of 
their trees for firewood and covered only with rank 
bamboo grass, In the valleys the Korean farmer 
finds sufficient ground to produce enough for the 
simple wants of himself and his family. He had 
under the administration of his own Government, 
no inducement to do more. If he did all the surplus 
was taken from him by the aristocratic and official 
robbers, " the licensed vampires of the country," who 
battened on him. The production of the land could 
have been doubled or trebled, but nothing was to 
be gained by the cultivator by additional energy or 
enterprise. As it was, he worked harder than any 
other member of the community, but even his greatest 
efforts at industry were listless and perfunctory. 

The principal crops are rice, beans, peas, millet, 
wheat, and barley ; the secondary tobacco, cotton, 
castor-oil, and potatoes. The Koreans understand 
or care little about the selection of seeds ; they 
have no system of artificial irrigation, and they use 
but little manure ; and yet such are the advantages 
of soil and climate that two crops are raised from 
the same land each year. All farming operations are 
carried out in the most primitive manner. Three 
men at least are required to use a spia|de — one to 
guide it by the handle, two others to raise it from; 
the ground by ropes attached to a long blade, and 
the two latter are sometimes increased to six or eight. 
Oxen are used to drag the plough, but it is made of 
wood. Rice and barley are threshed by beating on 
a board, winnowed by the simple process of throw- 
ing the grains in the wind, and milled by pestles in 
a wooden mortar. 

24 



370 THE STORY OF KOREA 

In the improvement of agriculture the Japanese 
administrators are taking! a strong interest, and had 
done much for the education of the farmers by pro- 
viding them with practical and theoretical lessons 
in model agricultural and horticultural farms, seed 
nurseries, sericultural training institutes, dendro- 
logical schools, and cattle-breeding stations, even 
before the annexation took place. Results are 
already apparent. Many of the farmers are begin- 
ning to appreciate what is being done for them, 
and are using the seeds provided for them and fol- 
lowing the directions given to them in sowing them. 
The quality of cocoons and raw silks has improved. 
The same is found to be the case in cotton. 
Investigation and experiment have shown that both 
soil and climate are eminently suited for the cultiva- 
tion of upland cotton, and larger and better crops 
are now being obtained than when the farmer used 
his old seeds in the old way. " It is no exaggeration 
to say that Korea is a natural orchard/ ' and grapes, 
pears, apples, and vegetables now promise, under 
improved methods of cultivation, to become a very 
substantial item in rural industry. Encouragement 
has been given for the reclamation of waste lands 
and marshes, of which there are said to be three 
million acres capable of development, nearly all the 
property of the Government. The freehold or 
[preferential leases of these lands have now been 
promised to settlers who reclaim them. Forestry 
and the protection of forests were entirely neglected 
by the old Government, and the consequence was the 
entire ;denudation of all the accessible portions of 
the country of trees, which were ruthlessly cut by 
the (people for fuel, or by Government officials for 
their own or State purposes ; and forests, worthy 
of the name, now only exist in the mountainous 
districts of the north and on some of the islands, or 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 371 

around the Imperial tombs. It was not until |the 
Japanese obtained full administrative control that any. 
remedy was attempted for these abuses, but a forest 
law has since been passed which will effectually pre- 
vent them in the future, and forest schools and 
nurseries have been established in the most suitable 
districts. The afforestation of State land has been 
encouraged by what is called the " Percentage 
Forests " system, a system — previously most success- 
fully tried in Northern Japan — under which the 
cultivator, who is provided with seeds and saplings 
free of charge, shares the profits with the State ; and, 
as in other agricultural industries, he is being taught 
scientific methods of culture, both in theory and 
practice, in the nurseries and schools. 

When the education that is now being given to the 
farmer has done its work, and the improved methods 
that have been already adopted by a few become 
universal ; when he feels assured that he is working 
for his own benefit and that his rent and taxation 
are defined ; when roads are opened by which his 
products can be cheaply and easily conveyed to 
market, where their prices will be fixed by himself 
and not by officials ; when payment for them is 
made in good sound money and not in a debased 
currency of which the intrinsic value was nil and 
the circulating value could not be gauged from day 
to day ; when his own markets are supplemented by 
those of foreign countries where his rice and beans 
will find ready buyers— there is no reason to believe 
that the Korean farmer will not develop a new spirit 
of energy which will bring prosperity, undreamt of 
in the past, to the industry of agriculture throughout 
the country. The realisation of all these contin- 
gencies is now, under the Japanese administration, 
within actual view. An index has already been given 
of what the peasant can do under the conditions of 



372 THE STORY OF KOREA 

good government. There has been, ever since Russia 
became a close neighbour, a substantial emigration 
of Koreans across the borders into the Russian terri- 
tory on the north-east frontier, though the emigrants, 
in the beginning, had to leave their country with as 
much secrecy and at as great danger as those under 
which the Roman Catholic missionaries originally 
entered it, and once having left it they became out- 
laws for ever. Just as the Irish peasant, unenter- 
prising, thriftless, and poverty-stricken in his own 
country, became, when he had escaped from the 
clutches of his grasping landlord, an ambitious, care- 
ful, and prosperous citizen of the United States, so 
has the Korean, freed from the tyranny and robbery of 
his own officials, become a prosperous and industrious 
settler in Russian territory. And as the whole aspect 
of the Irish agricultural industry and the character and 
circumstances of both farmers and labourers have 
changed for the better under the beneficent legislation 
of the last two decades of British history, 50 will Korea 
and the Koreans change when they have had time 
to experience and understand the just and honest 
Government, the security of liberty and property, 
which Japan will give them 1 . 

There is ample room on the lands that ha,ve 
hitherto lain waste and profitless for Japanese 
settlers, who will give to the natives the stimulus of 
competition and the example of their own industrious 
and effective methods. Only one cloud rests over 
the future of the natives : Will they be submerged 
and lost in an overwhelming torrent of Japanese 
immigrants, who come as conquerors, determined to 
exercise the prerogatives of conquerors in plunder 
and confiscation? Will the owners and tillers be 
idriven from the fertile low-lying lands on which 
they and their ancestors have lived for centuries, 
and be forced to find new homes in the mountain 




WINNOWING. 

(From Stereograph Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, London.) 



To face p. 372. 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 373 

wilds that have as yet never known the spade? Will 
it, to take once more the parallel that is furnished 
by Irish history, be another instance of " To Hell or 
Connaught "? In one respect the Japanese have 
spared the Koreans — they have not interfered with 
their religion. In others they have rivalled 
the Saxon planters of Ireland in the days of 
Elizabeth and James. Time alone will show whether 
their Government will wipe out the record of the 
past by the firm control of their own people in the 
future and by the protection which they give to a 
gentle, submissive, and peaceful people, who are in- 
capable of defending themselves. 

Korea had, long before it was opened to the world, 
a reputation for its mineral wealth. It was to a 
considerable degree a case of omne ignotum pro 
magnifico, but it had some foundation in the gold 
which was annually brought to China as tribute or 
bartered at the frontier markets. It has been told 
in a previous chapter how the rumour spread among 
Europeans in China that Korean kings were buried 
in coffins of solid gold. From that fable, as well as 
from the great quantity which tradition, almost 
equally fabulous, recorded as having formed part 
of the plunder of Hideyoshi's soldiers, and from the 
established fact of its export to China, it came to 
be accepted as a truism that the closed country would 
when opened prove a new Eldorado. Gold does exist 
in Korea in quantities to render its mining com- 
mercially profitable, but it has as yet given no 
promise of ever sensibly affecting the world's supply. 
Iron, coal, graphite, silver, and copper are also found, 
but as yet they have not been sufficiently exploited 
to justify any estimate being formed as to their 
future influence on the wealth and prosperity of the 
country. Under their own laws the people were 
forbidden to engage in mining operations, and the 



374 THE STORY OF KOREA 

only concession that was made was that which per- 
mitted of placer mining being carried on in small 
areas by very limited associations, in the most 
primitive manner. For this heavy fees had to be 
paid to the Government ; and as the fees were cer- 
tain, while the product was very much the reverse, 
the industry was not one which attracted either 
capitalists or prospectors of good repute. 

Until 1906 the legal prohibition against (mining 
applied to foreigners as well as natives. But it was 
repeatedly set aside by the Court in favour of 
foreigners, and concessions were granted in the most 
haphazard manner of mining rights in large areas 
to whomsoever could gain the goodwill of the King 
and offer him the most alluring terms. British, 
Americans, French, Italians, and Japanese were 
among the concessionaires, and all have since more 
or less exploited their respective areas. The most 
important results have been achieved by the 
Americans, in their mine at Unsan, in the north of the 
province of Phyong An, which is worked, under a 
concession granted by the King in 1896, by a syndi- 
cate entitled the " Oriental Consolidated Mining 
Company," with a capital of one million sterling. 
The value of its aggregate output, until the close of 
June, 1908, was £2,146,231, and its average annual 
yield is now valued at £250,000. 

In 1906 a ftew mining law was passed which threw 
the industry, under defined conditions, open to both 
foreigners and Koreans, and over five hundred 
licences were issued for specified areas within the 
three following years. The annual value of the gold 
that is exported to foreign countries, according to 
Customs returns, exceeds £500,000, but it is acknow- 
ledged that a considerable quantity goes abroad with- 
out having first undergone the formality of being 
submitted to the cognisance of the Customs officials. 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 375 

It is the only mining product as yet exported to a 
substantial value. 

Manufacturing industries in Korea might without 
very great exaggeration be compared to snakes in 
Ireland. If it is absurd to say " there are none/' 
they are insignificant when compared with what 
might be achieved by a people with mental and 
physical capacities of high order, and they are con- 
ducted under such primitive methods that only the 
most meagre results are attained. They are all 
cottage industries, carried on in individual house- 
holds, without either organisation or co-operation 
of labour. Art and manufacturing industry were 
destroyed by the Japanese in Hideyoshi's invasion : 
artists and workmen were carried as prisoners to 
Japan and their artistic and technical skill were lost 
to Korea, and she has never recovered either. Speci- 
mens of Korean workmanship that still exist in Japan, 
examples of which are the great bronze lantern and 
gates at the tomb of Iyeyasu in Nikko, and some of 
the very few relics that still survive in Korea are 
evidence of what her artists and workmen could do 
in the past, but is beyond their skill at the present, 
day. Their best efforts are now seen in iron caskets, 
gracefully inlaid with silver ; in brasswork that 
is equally graceful in shape, but unadorned ; in 
matting of exquisitely fine texture and artistic 
patterns ; in the wooden money-chests with their 
many locks, bars, and handles, all beautifully wrought 
in brass, specimens of which can now be seen as 
articles of furniture in many English households. 
All these are pretty and attractive, but they cannot 
be called sources of national wealth. Only two 
manufactures can be mentioned as attaining that 
dignity — paper and ginseng, and the latter ought 
perhaps to be called an agricultural rather than a 
manufacturing product. Both were among the most 



376 THE STORY OF KOREA 

valued items that were included in the tribute that 
was annually rendered to China and Japan in former 
days. 

The paper of Korea is unique, both in its quality 
and the uses to which it is applied, and it has always 
been highly appreciated both in China and Japan, 
though both countries possess prosperous paper 
industries of their own, the products of which are 
excellent and varied. The finest quality is made 
from the inner bark of the mulberry ; other qualities 
are made from rags and old paper, some even 
from cotton and hemp fibre. Its most remarkable 
characteristics are its toughness and durability. It 
}s used, apart from the ordinary purposes to which 
paper is applied in the West, for floor coverings, and 
as the material for travelling trunks, for waterproof 
clothing, and when rifles were unknown, it was also 
used for armour, its thickness and toughness being 
quite sufficient to resist an arrow or matchlock bullet. 

Ginseng — the root of the Panax ginseng, a 
perennial plant of the order of Araliacese — is the most 
highly valued drug in the Pharmacopoeia of China, 
especially for its prophylactic and stimulating pro- 
perties, and as Korea has always been the home of 
the finest quality that is known, whether of the wild 
or cultivated plant, it has ever been one of the chief 
items in her exports. The most valuable roots are 
those of the wild plant, but it is so rare and so 
difficult to find that the cultivated variety is relied 
on for the chief supply, and the industry both of 
growing and of manufacturing the plant for use was 
carefully fostered by the Government, in the interests 
of its own revenue. In the same interests it was 
converted into a Government monopoly under the 
Japanese protectorate, the Japanese in doing so 
following the precedent which they had previously 
made for themselves in the case of camphor in 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 377 

Formosa. Ginseng is grown throughout all Korea, 
but the principal seats of its production are in the 
west-central provinces of Hoang-Hai and Kyong- 
Kwi. In its natural condition the root, with its forked 
extremities, bears a ludicrous resemblance to the 
human body, and the most valued specimens, which 
fetch their own weight in pure gold in China, are 
those which are of the largest size, and in which this 
resemblance is closest. The plant requires seven 
years from the time at which the seed is sown in 
ground specially prepared for it till it arrives at 
maturity. During these years it has to be twice 
transplanted, and all the time carefully tended and 
sheltered from wind, sun, and rain. Another seven 
years must be allowed to lapse before the ground 
in which it was grown can be again used for the 
same purpose. 

When gathered it is in the form known as white 
ginseng, and then a long manufacturing process of 
steam heating and artificial drying has to be gone 
through before it is converted into its more valuable 
form of red ginseng in which it is exported. In its 
final appearance it is hard, brittle, translucent, amber- 
like in colour, and varies in length from two to four 
inches. In China it is so highly valued, that when 
a small quantity is sent as a present, it is usual to 
add a silver kettle, in which it may be properly 
served, as an insignificant adjunct to the real gift. 
Its commercial value may be assumed from the fact 
that, though it is produced and sold under the most 
stringent limitations, the official revenue derived from 
it amounts to an annual average of more than 
1,400,000 yen. It is anticipated by the Japanese that, 
when its culture is more scientifically carried out 
under expert official supervision, it will become one 
of the most important sources of the entire revenue 
of their new dominion. 



378 THE STORY OF KOREA 

Apart from gold and ginseng, the principal exports 
froto Korea are rice, beans and peas, hides, cattle, 
raw cotton, timber, wheat, all agricultural products. 
Paper, mats, yarns, textiles, and curios are the only 
manufactured articles that appear to deserve specific 
mention in the Customs returns, though they are com- 
piled with such minuteness as to record the export of 
individual articles of a value of only £30,000. That 
the export trade has made considerable progress is 
shown by the following figures of its values in the 
last thirteen years for which figures are available. 
The falling off in 1908 was owing to a diminished 
export of cereals, that arose from two causes — the 
first, the difficulties of internal transport owing 1 to 
the disorganisation caused by insurgents in Korea, 
and the second, the prevalence of unusually low prices 
in Japan. 

Exports. 

Value. 
Year. £ 

1895 248,000 

190I 837,000 

1907 1,648,000 

I908 ... 1,413,000 

Korea imports much more than she sends away, 
the deficiency being paid for with the money brought 
into the country by the Japanese and spent on the 
civil and military services and on the development of 
public works, and by European residents, especially 
missionaries, and possibly also to a not inconsider- 
able extent by gold that is not included in the 
Customs returns of exports. Taking the figures for 
the same years as those which have been given in 
the case of the exports, the values are as follows : 

Imports. 

Value. 
Year. £ 

1895 809,000 

I9OI 1,500,000 

I907 4,138,000 

1908 4,102,000 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 379 

The principal articles which contributed to these 
aggregate values were yarns, cotton piece goods, 
metals and metal manufactures, including machinery, 
and kerosene oil. From the first, whatever may 
have been the conservatism of the Koreans in main- 
taining their national isolation, they showed none in 
acquiring and using such European productions as 
they could obtain. It has been told in a previous 
chapter they once slaughtered the crews of two 
Chinese junks which they found near their shores, 
merely because they had some European piece goods 
among their cargoes. That was at the worst period 
of their murderous fanaticism against Christianity 
and Europeans, but even during the continuance of 
their most rigid isolation they showed no aversion 
to purchasing such European productions as they 
could obtain at the border fairs, and when trade 
became free they eagerly bought according to their 
means. In 1880 the whole value of the imports 
was only £86,000. A trade cannot be held un- 
promising for the future which, in less than thirty 
years, has grown in value from £86,000 to over 
£4,000,000 — an increase which, making due allow- 
ance for the difference in the size of the populations 
of the two countries, not unfavourably compares with 
that which Japan showed after the lapse of a similar 
period from the beginning of her own foreign 
relations . 

Great Britain's share in this trade in 1908 repre- 
sented 16J per cent, of the total, its value being 
£678,000. It was made up almost entirely of cotton 
piece goods ; and there were no limits to the 
possibilities of the further growth of this import 
among a population of ten million people, who 
are universally clothed in cotton, who have shown 
a steadily increasing appreciation of the output of 
Manchester looms ever since the opportunity of 



380 THE STORY OF KOREA 

purchasing it was first afforded to them. But Japan 
aspires no less at the commercial than she does at 
the military hegemony of the Far East, and she is 
determined to push herself into the very front rank 
of commercial just as she has already done into that 
of military powers. Her political friendship for Great 
Britain does not (nor should it) prevent her being 
our greatest commercial rival, and it would be the 
merest affectation to say that the Japanese will not 
take advantage, not only of their political influence in 
Korea, but of the geographical facilities which their 
new conterminity with Manchuria gives them to secure 
the monopoly of supplying from their own factories 
all the wants, not only of Korea but of Manchuria. 
It is true that a fair field will be given for the fight 
for ten years to come. All imports from Great 
Britain will, for that period, be liable only to the 
duties that are provided in the conventional tariffs 
concluded with Western powers by Korea in the 
days of her independence, and imports from Japan 
will, also for the same period, continue to be subject 
to the same conventional duties. British and 
Japanese manufacturers will therefore continue to 
compete on equal terms, but when ten years, a very 
short period in the life of nations, have lapsed, the 
old tariffs will come to an end. Japanese manu- 
factures must then enjoy free ingress to an integral 
part of the Japanese Empire, but all those from the 
West will become subject to the tender mercies 
which Japan has recently displayed towards imports 
to her own islands, when, for the first time in her 
modern history, she recovered complete and unre- 
stricted tariff autonomy. Competition under such 
terms will be impossible, and the Manchester weaver 
must now anticipate the absolute closing of the 
Korean market to his looms and a competition in 
that of Manchuria in which he will be so heavily 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 381 

handicapped that his final ousting is as sure as the 
rising of the sun. 1 

The annexation of Korea passed almost unnoticed 
in England, though both from the sentimental and 
material aspects it well merited attention. Few 
persons are so insensate as not to feel some sympathy 
in the downfall of a nation that claims to have had 
an historical existence from the days when Babylon 
was still in all its glory and grandeur, or in the 
subjection of a people who, whatever have been the 
faults of their Government and the reaction of those 
faults on themselves, possess many attractive quali- 
ties, who are kind, hospitable, gentle, generous, and 
good-tempered, dignified in their outward demeanour, 
and utterly unworldly, to an alien nation of different 
race, language, and traditions that has been their re- 
lentless enemy from time immemorial, at whose 
hands they have on many occasions experienced all 
the miseries of war, and in more recent days, 
in the time of peace, tyranny and spoliation, 
the memory of which can only be erased iby 
decades, perhaps even centuries, of good and merciful, 
government. But no word of sympathy with the 
ancient royal house of Korea was uttered in the 
English Press or by English statesmen ; 2 no comment 
was made on the influence which its downfall was 

1 In the year 1909, the value of the Import Trade of Korea, as 
compared with 1908, decreased to ^3, 741,000, owing to the falling of 
the import of railway materials, military and other requisites for 
the Japanese Government, the low price of rice and other causes. 
The decrease, however, in the value of the imports from the United 
Kingdom, cotton manufactures, cutlery, etc., nearly all consumed by 
the people, as distinct from the Government, was only ^14,000, or 
less than 4% of the total decrease. 

2 As far as the memory of the writer goes, not even a question was 
asked in Parliament, and the Times was the only journal which dealt 
with the matter in a leading article. 



382 THE STORY OF KOREA 

likely to exercise on the balance of military and 
commercial power in the Far East. 

Japan is now closely associated with Great Britain 
by the defensive alliance between the two nations, and 
all the present political interests of Japan, all the 
publicly expressed wishes of her statesmen, press, 
and people, show that it is their desire to continue 
and intensify that alliance, and that they are willing 
for its sake, to make great monetary sacrifices in 
order to still further develop their fighting strength 
both on sea and land. We can therefore afford to 
contemplate with unruffled equanimity, even with 
satisfaction, the immense addition which has been 
made to Japan's military strength by the acquisition 
of some of the finest harbours in the world, of the 
complete control of the northern seas of China, and by 
the incorporation among her own citizens of a people 
whose manhood is capable of being converted, as 
their past history shows, into brave and efficient 
soldiers. Some English writers who have witnessed 
the unresisting submissiveness of the stalwart 
Koreans to Japanese bullies have represented them 
as natural cowards. It is true that the spirit of 
slavery has entered into their souls, but the 
descendants of the men who, ill armed, ill drilled, 
and ill fed, faced the veterans of Hideyoshi, of those 
who, in recent years, armed with only matchlocks, 
faced with equal courage French and United States 
rifles and artillery, cannot, notwithstanding all their 
moral degradation, be altogether destitute of military 
courage. English conquerors and French critics in 
the time of William III ., in the worst period of British 
oppression and tyranny, described the Irish soldiers 
as poltroons with the courage of sheep. Subsequent 
history gave a very different view of them to both 
conquerors and critics. As it has been with the 
Irish so it may be with the Koreans, and the time 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 383 

may come when the Japanese soldier will look upon 
his Korean fellow-subject of the Emperor as his 
worthy ;partner in the ranks. 

It would have been hypocritical for the British 
people who, when the spirit of material aggrandise- 
ment prompted them, ruthlessly ended the ancient 
kingdoms of India, from the Indus to the Irawaddy, 
to condemn our allies, for taking a step which 
all Japanese think is essential to the future 
prosperity and safety of their own Empire, which 
many honestly believe will be productive of nothing 
but good to the mass of the Korean people, and which 
their dearly bought victories in war give them both 
the pow r er and right to carry to its end. But our 
commercial interests might well have prompted us 
to give to Japan a gentle reminder of the obligation 
implied in the treaty of 1905, and to suggest that 
a guarantee should be given for a fair field for our 
trade in the future. As it was, Korea fell, unnoticed 
and uncared for. The fall was infinitely pathetic. 
Let us hope it will be redeemed, as the writer believes 
it will, by the future happiness and welfare of the 
people. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



LIST OF WORKS, RELATING TO KOREA, WHICH HAVE 
BEEN CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF 
THIS VOLUME. 



History of the Church in Japan Crasset 
Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. vii. 
Travels of some Dutchmen in 

Japan 

(Narrative of an unlucky voyage 

and imprisonment in Korea.) 

* Voyages to the Eastern Seas... 



London 



Henry Hamel London 



~ Histoire du Christianisme au 
Japon 

( Narrative of the Voyage of 
H.M.S. Samarang ,.. 

Histoire de l'Eglisede Coree... 
v^ Der Feldzug der Japanir gegen 

Korea im Jahre 1597 by Okoji 

Hidemoto 

China 

* Japan and Korea 

Korea — Its History, Manners, 

and Customs 

A Forbidden Land 

1. Diary of Richard Cox 

The Sacred Books of the East, 

vol. xiv 

Trade between Japan and 

Korea 

The Land of the Morning Calm 



Captain Basil 
Hall, R.N. 

Charlevoix 



London 



Paris 



Captain Belcher, London 

R.N. 
Dallet Paris 



Pfizmaier Vienna 

F. von Richthof en Berlin 
E. H. House Tokio 

Ross Paisley 

Oppert London 

Hakluyt Society London 



Max Miiller 

Longford 

Lowell 

25 



Oxford 

London 
London 



1707 
1811 

1827 

1828 
1848 
1874 



i875 
1877 
1877 

1880 
1880 
1882 

1882 

1883 
1886 



386 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Life in Korea 

* Corea and the Powers 

Life and Times of Hideyoshi... 
- Journey in the North of Korea 

in 1889 

m Korea and the Sacred White 

Mountain ... 

Problems of the Far East 
Nihongi, or Chronicles of Japan 

* Korean Interviews 

Korea and her Neighbours ... 

v La Coree jusqu'au IX siecle ... 

* Notes sur les Etudes Coreennes 
I The Voyage of John Saris to 

Japan 

. Bibliographie Coreenne 

The Path of Empire 

Korea 

Japanese Relations with Korea 
(article in the Nineteenth 
Century) 

Un Etablissement Japonais en 
Coree 

History of Japan (vol. ii.) 

La Coree 

^Pauvre et Douce Coree 

The Garden of Asia 

Koreans at Home 

Korea — The Hermit Nation 
(seventh edition) 

The History of Korea 

Uber den Einfluss des Sanskrits 
auf das Japanische und 
Koreanische Schriftssystem 
- The Japanese in Korea 

The Tragedy of Korea 

The Common Origin of the 
Japanese and Korean Lan- 
guages 

History of Japan (vol. i.) 

The Cambridge Modern His- 
tory — Japan, vol. xii. 



Carles 


London 


1888 


Duncan 


Shanghai 


1889 


Denning 


Tokio 


1890 


C. W. Campbell 


London 


1891 


Cavendish 


London 


1894 


Curzon 


London 


1896 


Aston 


London 


1896 


Morse 


New York 


1897 


Bishop 


London 


1898 


Courant 


Paris 


j 898 


Courant 


Paris 


1899 


Hakluyt Society 


London 


1900 


Courant 


Paris 


191 1 


Lynch 


London 


1903 


Hamilton 


London 


1903 



Longford 



London 



1904 



Courant 


Paris 


1904 


Murdoch 


Kobe 


1907 


Courant 


Paris 


1904 


Ducrocq 


Paris 


1904 


Farrer 


London 


1904 


Taylor 


London 


1904 


Griffis 


London 


!905 


Hulbert 


Seoul 


1905 


Kanazawa 


Tokio 


1907 


Hulbert 


Seoul 


1907 


Mackenzie 


London 


1908 


Kanazawa 


Tokio 


1910 


Murdoch 


Tokio 


1910 



Longford 



Cambridge 1910 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



387 



Korea — Diplomatic and Con- 
sular Reports 

The Japan Mail {passim) 



Reports of the various Mission- 
ary Societies engaged in 
Korea 



Foreign Office 



London 

Yoko- 
hama 



JAPANESE PUBLICATIONS 



Chosen Jijo (Korean Affairs) ... 

Chosen Kinkio Kibun (Reports 

on the present condition of 

Korea) 

Sensen Kokwa Chosen Ronshiu 
(The Reasons for War or 

Peace with Korea) 

Reports of the Japanese 

Residency-General in Korea : 

The Reorganisation of the 

Finances of Korea 
Reform and Progress in 

Korea 

Reform and Progress in 

Korea 

Recent Progress in Korea 
The Tenth Financial and 
Economic Annual of Japan 



Yenomoto Muyo Tokio 



War Office 



Kirishima 



Tokio 



Tokio 



f 1890- 

c 1870- 
( 1910 



1900-10 

1882 
1882 
1882 

1906 

1908 

1909 
1910 

1910 



Satow 



Aston 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN 

The Introduction of Tobacco into 
Japan 

The Korean Potters in Satsuma 
Hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea, Part I. 
Proposed Arrangement of Korean 

Alphabet ... „ 

Hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea, Part II. „ 
)> }) i) 111. ,, 

Kojiki or Records of Ancient Matters Chamberlain 
Early History of Printing in Japan ... Satow 
Further Notes on Movable Type in 

Korea „ 



Vol. vi. 



Vol. viii. 
Vol. ix. 

Vol. x. 



388 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea, 

Part IV Aston Vol. xi. 

A Secret Trip in the Interior of Korea Kenny „ 

A Visit to the West Coast and Capital 

of Korea Hall „ 

Notes on the Capital of Korea ... Bonar „ 

The Manchus Parker Vol. xiv. 

Early Japanese History Aston „ 

Korean Popular Literature ... ... „ Vol. xviii. 

Race Struggles in Korea Parker „ 

Hi no maru or National Flag of Japan Aston Vol. xxii. 

The On mun — when Invented ... „ Vol. xxiii. 

Chhoi Chhung — a Korean Marchen „ Vol. xxviii. 







CD 



O 

o 



3 -a 

as 



m 



~f<L~F*^S#?A- 






: ■ ... 



l^gggg 






J A LP A N 



,/.,'/ "' ' 



w 



INDEX 



Agriculture, obstacles to, 368 ; 
improved by Japanese, 370. 

Aichu, town of, 19 ; timber in- 
dustry of, 19 ; besieged by 
Chinese 77 ; barrier town be- 
tween Korea and China, 207 

Ainos, 97 

Alceste, H.M.S., visits Korea, 225 

Alexander de Govea, Bishop at 
Peking, 246 

Ancestor worship, 249 ; forbidden 
by missionaries, 250 

Animals, domestic, 15 ; wild, 15 

Annexation of Korea, 381, 383. 

Antung, port of, 347 

Arch of Independence, 23 

Art n Korea, 375 

Asan,town of ,188; Chinese driven 
from, 333 

Aston, Dr., 66, 94, 97 

Aumaitre, priest, 279 ; execution 
of, 284 

Baiji, see Pekche. 

Basil Hall, Captain, visits coast of 

Korea, 25 
Beaulieu, Jesuit priest in Korea, 

279 ; tortured and executed, 283 
Belcher, Captain, surveys Quel- 

part, 226 
Bell, the city bell of Seoul, 22 
Ben-han, position of, 62 
Berneux, Simeon Francis, conse- 



crated Bishop, 279 ; lands 

from junk, 279 • tortured and 

executed, 283 
Birds in Korea, 17 
Bomb, first mention of, 164 
Bretenieres, Jesuit priest in Korea, 

279; tortured and executed, 

283 
British Legation in Japan, attacks 

on, 307 
Bruguiere, Barthelemy, appointed 

Apostolic Vicar to Korea, 261 ; 

journey of, to Korean borders, 

262 ; death of, 263 
Buddha and Buddhism, 98-99, 

104, 133, 134 

Calais, priest in Korea, 279 

Cathay, derivation of, 109 

Census, 366-7 

Cespedes, Gregorio de, chaplain 
to Hideyoshi's troops, arrives at 
Fusan, 217 

Chemulpo, 14 ; comparison of, 
with Yokohama and description 
of, 21, 22 

Chhung Chyong, meaning of name, 
18 ; harbours of, 24, 314 ; in- 
vaded by Hideyoshi, 187 

Chik-san, battle of, 187 

Chi-li, province of, 69; devastated, 

69 

Chin, origin of name of China, 109 



390 



INDEX 



China-Japan War, first step to- 
wards, 332 

Chinampo, port of Phyong An, 20 

Chin Ikei, Chinese Envoy, 172 ; 
received by Hideyoshi, 176 

Chinju, assault of, 164 ; Korean 
treasure in, 177 ; taking of, 177 

Chiuai, Emperor of Japan, 91 

Cholla, meaning of name, 18 ; 
harbours of, 24 ; invaded by 
Wang Kien, 85 

Chosen, first use of name, 32 ; end 
of kingdom of, 56; name of, 
resumed, 126 

Chow, Emperor, 51 

Christians, faith of early Korean, 
248 ; treatment and sufferings 
of, 258, 260, 290 ; beg for priests, 
259 ; rank of, 267 ; six female, 
martyred, 268 ; increase in 
numbers of, 279 ; supposed to 
cause misfortune, 281 ; declared 
traitors, 289; number of, in 
Korea, 293 

Christianity, introduction of, into 
Japan, 148 ; spread of, in Korea, 
258 

Chung Jong's good reign, 134 

Church, Roman Catholic, in Korea, 
229 

Climate of Korea, 27, 28 

Cocoons, 370 

Cock, heraldic emblem, 345 
Cocks, head of English factory in 

Japan, 197 
Confucianism inculcates worship 

of ancestors, 249 
Conservative party, treatment of, 
322 ; call in Chinese troops, 

323 
Consuls, Prussian merchant, 234 ; 
in Korea, 315 



Corfe, Bishop, 337 

Cotton, 370 

" Court, Korean," scene of intrigue, 

212 
Crops raised, 369 
Customs service established, 328 

Dagelet, Island, 11 

Daveluy, Marie Antoine Nicholas, 
missionary to Korea, 273 ; travels 
in small boat with Ferreol, 276 ; 
torture and execution of, 284 

Diamond Mountains, description 

of, 13 
Dictionary, Korean, 291 
Diplomatic representatives in 

Korea, 315 
Dutch in Korea, 224, 225 

" Easterners," political party, 135 
East India Company in Japan, 

196 
Elders, political party, 136 
Embassy, Korean, to Japan, 143 ; 
treatment of, 145 ; return to 
Korea, 145 ; to Tokugawa Sho- 
gun, 197 ; to China, 207 ; to 
United States, 360 
Emperors, rival, in China, 68 
Examihations in Chinese literature 

127 
Exports, 378 

Factory, Japanese, in Fusan, 199 ; 
Dutch, in Deshima, 198 

Famine in Korea, 178 

Farming implements, 369 

Febiger, 239 

Feron, priest in Korea, 279 ; es- 
cape and sufferings of, 286 ; 
travels to Chefoo, 286 ; appeals 
to Admiral Roze, 286 



INDEX 



391 



Ferreol, Jean Joseph, consecrated, 
Bishop, 273 ; travels in small 
boat to Korea, 276 ; describes 
boat, 276 ; death of, 279 

Feudalism, in Korea, abolished, ' 
127 

Fish, abounds in Korea, 17 ; much 
caught by Japanese, 17 

Fishing, Korean, primitive, 17 

Forests, 370 ; percentage, 371 

French, Government letter to 
Korea, 226 ; reply to, 227, 228, 
229 ; threat to Korea, 230 ; fleet 
proceeds to River Han, 235; 
result of attack on Kang Wha, 
237, 240 

Fujiwara, Japanese noble family, 
117 

Fung Wang Chang, border city, 
206 

Fusan, harbour of, 12 ; description 
of, 25 ; factory at, 133, 198, 199 

Gate of Gratitude, 23 

General, Chinese, executed, 57 

General Sherman, U. S. ship, lost, 
230, 232 

Genghiz Khan, 109 ; defeats the 
Kins, in ; conquers Korea, in 

Gensan, opening of, to trade, 26 ; 
birthplace of Taijo, 27 ; monas- 
tery of, 27 ; Russian warship at, 
281 

Genso, Japanese monk, 161 

Gesang, training of, 48 

Gloire la, French frigate, grounded, 
226 ; men of, rescued by Eng- 
lish, 226 

Gold in Korea, 232 ; annual value 
of export, 374 

Golden age of Korean morals, 133 

Goto Islands, 234 



Graves, disturbance of, brings mis- 
fortune, 132 ; opened by King 
Yunsan, 132 

Great Britain's trade with Korea, 
379, 381 ; rivalry in trade with 
Japan, 380 

Guerilla warfare in Korea, 163 ; 
affects nerves of Japanese, 164 

Guillotine devised, 290 

Hachiman, God of War, 147 

Ha-in, commoners of Korea, 32 

Hairdressing of men, 334 ; reform 
in, causes rebellion, 334 

Hall of the Thousand Mats, de- 
struction of, 181 

Hamel, shipwreck of 209 ; escape 
of, 224 ; writes earliest descrip- 
tion of Korea, 10 

Ham Gyong, province of, 13 ; 
meaning of, 18 ; description of, 
26 

Han, river, 14 ; freezing of, 27 ; 
French frigate at entrance to, 
226. Han Yang, fortress on 
the Han, 125 

Han, 60 

Han yang, burnt, 119 

Heian-jo, ancient name of Kioto, 

125 
Hideyoshi, regent of Japan, 140 ; 
low birth of, 141 ; sends envoy 
to Korea, 142 ; reception of 
envoy from, 142 ; insults Korean 
ambassador, 144 ; boastful letter 
of, 144; Napoleon of Japan, 
145 ; character of, 146 ; plans 
conquest of Korea, 147, 148 ; 
prepares for war, 151 ; receives 
Chinese envoy, 176 ; frees 
Korean princes, 176 ; orders 
taking of Chin ju, 177; duplicity 



392 



INDEX 



of, 180 ; reception of Ambassa- 
dors by, 181 ; hall of audience, 
181 ; investiture of, 182 ; anger 
of, 184 ; refuses to receive 
Koreans, 184 ; again prepares 
for war, 184 ; withdraws troops 
from Korea, 190 ; failing health 
of, 190; dying words of, 190; 
death of, 190; death of son of, 194 
Hidetada, son of Iyeyasu, 196 
Hijo Jung, reforms of, 209 
Hirado, foreign traige of, 197 
History of Korea, 291 
" Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree/' 

293 
Hiuga, province of, 28 

Hoang-hai, meaning of name, 18 ; 
position of 20 ; Konishi's march 
on, 158 ; U. S. steamer wrecked 
at, 230 

Hoh Su Wen, murders King of 
Korai, 75 ; appearance of, 76 ; 
declares war on Silla, 76 ; in- 
fluence of, 81 ; death of, 81 ; 
sons of, 81 

Hojo, regents, 115 ; subjugated by 
Hideyoshi, 143 

Hong Kong, cession of, 273 

Huin, priest in Korea, 279 ; execu- 
tion of, 284 

Hulbert, " History of Korea," 65, 
78, 165, 168 

Hunchun, 273 

Hung Woo, emperor, 120 

Hwang Ti, title of, no 

Hyong Jong, reforms of, 209 

Iksan, landing of Kijun at, 62 

Imbert, Laurent Marie Joseph, 

Vicar Apostolic in Korea, 265 ; 

of peasant origin, 265 ; disguise 

used by, 265 ; surrenders to 



police, 270 ; tortured, 270"; body 
of, reinterred by converts, 271 

Imna, State of, 64 

Imports present day, 210, 378, 

379 

Injin river, meeting of Japanese 
and Koreans on, 161 

Inouye, Count, in China, 326 ; to 
reform Korea, 333 ; opinions in 
Nichi Nichi Shimbun, 337I 

Investiture, patent of, of Hide- 
yoshi, 182 

Ito, Prince,in Korea, 326; Resident- 
General, 354 ; institutes reforms, 
355 ; assassination of, 357 

Iyeyasu, resembles Wang Kien, 
105; requests tribute from Korea, 
196 

Izaenagi, 89 

Japan, receives teachers and mis- 
sionaries from s Korea, 66 ; sends 
help to Pekche, 80 ; wholesale 
defeat of, by Chinese and Sillan 
troops, 80 ; early relations of, 
with Korea, 89, 91 ; friendship 
of, with Pekche, 97 ; contrasted 
with Korea, 208 ; demands 
renewal of vassalage, 297 ; word 
of Emperor of, law, 365 

Japanese, make peace with China, 
175 ; evacuate Seoul, 175 ; en- 
trench themselves at Fusan, 
188; retreat from Seoul, 188; 
sack Kyunju, 188; nostalgia, 191; 
ships destroyed, 191 ; carry art 
treasures from Korea, also artists 
and artisans, 192 ; at Fusan, 
199 ; proposals to Korea, 301 ; 
expedition to Kang-Wha, 302 ; 
conclude treaty with Korea, 
302 ; clauses in treaty made by, 



INDEX 



393 



303 ; murders of, in Korea, 309 ; 
Legation burnt, 309; leave 
Seoul, 310 ; demand indemnity, 
311 ; in Seoul join conspiracy, 
323 ; escape to Chemulpo, 326 ; 
lose influence in Korea, 327 ; 
adventurers flock to Korea, 335; 
power in Korea, 360 ; love of 
their Emperor, 364 

Jesuits first arrive in Korea, 9; 
priest in Korea, 217 ; in Peking, 
244; confer with Korean am- 
bassadors, 245 

Jingo, Empress of Japan, invades 
Korea, 91 ; miraculous voyage 
of, 92 ; terms of treaty with 
King of Silla, 92 ; staff and spear 
of, 93 ; son of, 147 

Joano, Roman Catholic priest, 
279 

Juniors, political party, 136 

Kaempfer, Dutch historian, 242 

Kagoshima, 240 

Kamakura, 117 

Kang Wha, city and island of, 
described, 23 ; attacked by 
foreigners, 24 ; treaty signed at, 
24 ; seat of Episcopal Mission 
to Korea, 24 ; taken by Man- 
chus, 293 ; royal library of, 236 ; 
taken and burnt by French, 
227 ; Christian Church in, 293 

Kang won, province of, 14 ; mean- 
ing of name, 18 ; description of, 
26 ; invaded by Kung I, 85 

Kao, forms kingdom of Kao Kaoli, 
59 ; extent of kingdom of, 60 

Kaoli, sec Korai, 57. 

Kara, kingdom of, sends am- 
bassadors to Japan, 90 ; Japanese 
name for, 90 



Karak, kingdom of, 63 ; absorbed 
by Silla, 64 

Kato Kiyomasa, General, 150; 
parentage of, 150 ; hatred of, to 
Christianity, 151 ; marches into 
Ham Gyong,ii59; takes Korean 
princes prisoner, 174 

Keirin, meaning of, 345 

Keswick, Mrs., in Korea, 317 

Khitan tribe, take possession of 
Manchuria and Liaotung, 108 ; 
demands homage from Korea, 
no ; Sunto burnt by, no ; give 
derivation to Cathay, 108 

Khordadbeh describes Korea, 9 

Kim ok Kiun escapes from Korea 
and joins Progressionists, 329 ; 
escapes to Japan, 329 ; family of, 
executed, 329 ; deported by 
Japanese to Bonin Islands, 330 ; 
deported to Hakodate, 330 ; shot 
in Shanghai, 331 ; body of, sent 
to Korea, 331 ; body of, dis- 
honoured, 331 

Kim, Andrew, fearless Christian, 
274 ; voyage of, to Shanghai, 
274 ; arrives at Wosung, 275 ; 
appeals to British officers and 
is helped by them, 275 ; or- 
dained first Korean-born priest, 
276 ; martyrdom of, 277 

King of Korea, sacredness of 
person of, 38, 39 ; prerogatives 
of, 39 ; flies to Kang Wha, 202 ; 
submits to Manchus, 204 ; last, 
214 ; body of, said to be buried 
in gold coffer, 232 ; in hands 
of the Progressionists, 322 ; 
sufferings of, 341 ; escapes to 
the Russian Legation, 342 ; 
assumes title of Emperor, 342 

Ki Tse, first mention of, 50 ; founds 



394 



INDEX 



Chosen, 51 ; improves country 
and introduces civilisation, 52 ; 
eight laws of, 52 ; descendant 
flies from capital, 53 ; name re- 
stored to kingdom by Taijo, 125 

Kiusiu, province of> 11, 91 ; Mon- 
gol Embassy lands in, 117 

Konchi, island of, 167 

Konishi Yukinaga, General, 150 ; 
early years, 150 ; enters Seoul, 
157 ; marches on Phyong An, 
160 ; fights against Kato, 193 ; 
execution of, 194 

Korai or Kaoli, State of, 57 ; origin 
of name, 60 ; struggle of, with 
China, 68 ; invaded by China, 
70, 71 ; again invaded by China, 
76 ; doom of, prophesied, 82 ; 
people of, 83 ; change of name 
of, 125 

Korea, geographical position of, 
9, n ; visited by European men- 
of-war, 10 ; area and boundaries 
of, 11 ; Straits of, 11 ; islands of, 
11 ; coasts of, 13 ; mountains 
of, 14 ; meat-eating nation, 15 ; 
earliest history of, 50 ; high 
civilisation of, 65 ; Hulbert's 
History of, 65 ; ruled by Silla, 
84; degradation of Court of, 
121 ; decline of, 139 ; effect of 
war on, 194 ; assists Mings 
against Manchus, 202 ; invaded 
by Manchus, 203 ; treaty of, 
with Manchus, 203 ; greater 
isolation of, 205 ; sends insult- 
ing letters to Japan, 241, 297, 
299 ; poverty of, 305 ; houses of, 
305 ; prospects of trade in, 306 ; 
embassy to Japan in 1882, 314 ; 
climate and cultivation, 370 
Koreans, resemblance of, to 



Bretons, 30 ; seclusion of, 30 ; 
courage of, 40 ; hatred of, for 
foreigners, 282 ; send embassy 
to T0M0, 306; study in Japan, 
313 ; suffer from Japanese 
roughs, 336 

Korietz, gunboat, sunk, 21 

Kotei, title of, 304 

Kouen I, renamed Francois 
Xavier, embraces Christianity, 
247 

Kudara, joins Pekche and declares 
war on Silla, 77 ; resists Silla, 81 

Kumaso, invade Korea, 96 

Kuroda, Lord of Hizen, 158 

Kung I proclaims himself King of 
Silla, 85 ; proclaims himself 
Buddhist Messiah, 86 ; murders 
wife and sons, 87 ; death of, 87 

Kwisun or tortoise-boat, described, 
168 

Kyong-Kwi, meaning of name, 
18 ; wealth of, 20 ; invaded by 
Kung I, 85 

Kyong-syang, province of, 18 ; 
meaning of name, 18 ; historical 
interest of, 25 

Kyunju, capital of Silla, 25 ; splen- 
dour of, 84 ; sack of, by Hide- 
yoshi's troops, 84, 154, 188 ; 
retaken by Koreans, 164 

Kyun Wun rebels against Silla, 86 ; 
struggle of, with Wang Kien, 
87 ; defeated and surrenders 
to Wang Kien, 87 

Lakes of Korea, 15 

Landre, Roman Catholic priest, 

279 
Language of Korea allied with 

Japanese, 30 
Lazareff, Port, 12 



INDEX 



395 



Legation, Japanese, in Korea, at- 
tached and burnt, 309 ; again 
attacked and burnt, 323, 324 ; 
staff of, recalled, 341 

Li Hung Chang, 307 ; sends 
troops to Korea, 312, 313 

Liao river, 70 ; battle on banks of, 

7i 
Liao Tung, attacked by Yu Ku, 

54 ; attempted conquest of, by 

Emperor Yang, 73 
Liao Yang, siege of, by Chinese, 

72 ; description of siege of, 74 ; 

seat of learning visited by 

Japanese, 103 
Lyra, H.M.S., visits Korea, 225 

Mahan, 171 

Ma-han, position of, 62 ; descrip- 
tion of inhabitants of, 62 

Maistre, Pere, tries to reach Korea, 
277 ; lands in Korea, 278 ; death 
of, 279 

Manchu tribe, 108 ; mythical 
origin of, 201 ; invades China, 
201 ; captures Peking and Nan- 
king, 201 ; treatment of Korean 
prisoners by, 202 

Manchuria, 11 ; plains of, 57 

Manufactures, Korean, 375, 376 

Market at Fung Wang Chang, 206 

Marriage in Korea, 42, 367 

Masampo, harbour of, 12 

Maubant, Pierre Philibert, suc- 
ceeds Mgr. Bruguiere, 263 ; 
crosses frozen river Yalu, 263 ; 
description of journey of, 263-4 '> 
tortured and executed, 271 ; body 
of, reinterred by converts, 271 

McLeavy Brown, Sir J., 357 ; ser- 
vices of, to Korea, 357 

Miidera, temple of, 150 



Military system, inferiority of, 140 

Mimana, 64 ; Japanese troops in, 
100 

Mimi Dzuka or Ear Mound, 192 

Mineral wealth of Korea, 373 

Ming or Bright Dynasty of China, 
120 ; kindness of, to Korea, 201 

Mining forbidden, 373 ; state of 
industry, 374 

Min Yong Ik, ambassador to 
United States, 320 ; attack on, 
322 

Missionaries, Roman Catholic, 
enter Korea, 10 ; of various 
creeds enter Korea, 292 ; Bud- 
dhist, in Japan, 99 ; at time of 
annexation, 293 

Miura, Viscount, succeeds Count 
Inouye in Korea, 335 ; con- 
spiracy with Tai Won Kun, 
339 ; recall of, 341 

Miyake or State granary, 64 ; des- 
troyed by Silla, 101 

Nagasaki, Dutch trade of, 197 

Nagoya, 149. 

Naktong river, 14, 153 

Nam Hau group, islands of the, 

13, 328 
Namwon, garrisoned, 197; taken 

by Japanese, 187 ; garrison 

slaughtered, 187 
Napoleon III. protects Roman 

Catholics, 235 
" Nelson of Korea," 137 
Newchwang, treaty port of, 230 
Nihongi, dates in the, 97 
Nishi-Rosen convention, 346 
Nobunaga, 134 

" Northerners," political party, 135 
Nyuchi tribe, 108 ; combines with 

Korea, no 



396 



INDEX 



On mun, invention of, 130 ; letter 
written in, 131 

Opium war, 273 

Oppert, attempts to ascend 
River Han, 230 ; makes survey, 
230 ; second attempt made by, 
231 ; draws up treaty, 231 ; 
book on Korea by, 233 ; attempts 
to open royal tomb, 233 ; evil 
influence of, 234 

Oriental Consolidated Mining 
Company, 374 

Otomo, Prince of Bungo, 173 

Pachiung, Chinese reach, 174 ; 
battle of, 174 

Pagoda, the marble, in Seoul, 23 

Paik Tu mountain, 13 

Pak Han, fortress of, 126 

Pak Yong Hyo, 238 

Palace, attack on, 339 ; fate of 
defenders of, 339 

Parkes, Sir Harry, 311 

Patriotism sacrificed, 140 

Peasants, degradation of, 41 

Pekche or <( hundred crossers," 63 

Kijun joins, 63 ; unites with Silla 
against Korai, 69 ; declares war 
on Silla, 77 ; King of, weak, 78 ; 
fall of capital of, 78 ; fate of 
women of palace of, 78 ; incor- 
porated in Chinese Empire, 79 ; 
attempts to recover indepen- 
dence, 79 ; prays Japan for help, 
79 ; people of, emigrate to Japan 
and found colonies, 80 ; date of 
fall of, 80 ; submits to Empress 
Jingo, 93 ; sends tribute to Japan, 
96 ; King of, sends image of 
Buddha to Japan, 98 ; King of, 
murdered, 101 

Peking, treaty signed at, 179 ; 



taking of, by allies, 279 ; summer 
palace of, sacked, 279 

Persecution of Christians, 242-7 ; 
more violent, 267 ; result of, 272 

Petitnicholas Michel Alexandre, 
lands in Korea, 279 

Phyong An, province of, 14 ; 
meaning of name, 18 ; descrip- 
tion of, 18 ; battle of, in 1894, 
19 ; taking of, by Japanese, 19 ; 
agricultural and mineral wealth 
of, 20 ; planned assault of, by 
Chinese, 72 ; feigned submission 
of, 73 ; taken by Chinese and 
Silla, 82 ; inhabitants of, fly to 
Silla, 82 : beauty of women of, 
83 ; Konishi marches on, 160 ; 
second invasion of, by Chinese, 
173 ; Presbyterian Church in, 

293 

Pick I., meaning of name, 245 ; 
embraces Christianity, 246 ; re- 
named Jean Baptiste, 246 ; re- 
cantation of, 248 ; death of, 248 

Pirates, Japanese, 1 15-19; driven 
from Korean coasts, 127 ; punish- 
ment of, 143 

Population, 366 

Portsmouth Treaty, 353 

Port Hamilton occupied by British, 
328 

Pourthie, Charles Antoine, lands 
in Korea, 279 

Priests, poverty of, in Korea, 269 ; 
last leave Korea, 288 

Primorsk, province of, 11 

Progressionists, 321 ; animosity of, 
towards Min Yong Ik, 321 ; de- 
feated by Conservatives, 323 

Prophecy of Korea's doom, 348 

Proselytes study at Macao, 274 

Providence, H.M.S., 225 



INDEX 



397 



Queen, last, of Korea, character of, 
214 ; disappearance of, 308 ; re- 
appearance, 313 ; meets Euro- 
peans, 320 ; power of, 338 ; 
murdered, 340 ; body of, burnt, 
340 ; successor of, 359 

Queens of Silla, 84 

Quelpart, Island of, 10, 12, 219 

Race, probable origin of, 28 ; 
characteristics of, 29 

Railway, first, in Korea, 22, 356 

Regents, female, 212, 213, 254 

Ricci, Jesuit bishop, founded 
mission in Peking, 243 ; respect 
of Chinese for, 243 ; death of, 
244 ; book by, sent to Korea, 
244; condones ancestor wor- 
ship, 250 

Ri-Chosen, inventor of cannon, 
164 

Ridel, Roman Catholic priest in 
Korea, 285 

Rivers of Korea, 14 

Royal seal, 213 

Roze, Admiral, French Com- 
mander-in-chief, naval expedi- 
tion, 281 

Russians, obtain Usuki territory 
from China, 280 ; demand right 
to trade, 281 

Sadahiko, general, attacks Korai, 

101 
Sakai, Chinese ambassadors land 

at, 180 
Sakyamuni, image of Budda made 

by, 98 
Samarang, H.M.S., 226 
Samurai, anger of, against Korea, 

229 ; demand war with Korea, 

300 



Schools founded, 355 

Se Jong, 129 ; invents alphabet, 
130 

Seng-houng-I, first Korean con- 
verted to Christianity, 246 ; re- 
named Pierre, 246 ; recantation 
and death of, 248 

Seoul, position of, 14 ; alteration 
in, 22 ; walls and gates of, 22 ; 
casting of bell of, 22 ; power of 
Tai won Kun, 23 ; likened to 
a laundry, 49 ; ancient name 
of, 12 ; eight gateways of, 126 ; 
occupation of, by Japanese, 157 

Serfs, emancipation of, 210 

Shimonoseki, peace of, 333 

Shin-han, position of, 62 

Shinra, explanation of term, 63 ; 
change of name, 63 

Shin-ten-rai, a cannon devised by 
Korean, 164 

Shipwrecked Dutch sailors, 218 ; 
attempt to escape, 221 ; punish- 
ment of, 221 ; detained in Korea, 
222 ; stories of, 222 ; escape to 
Japan, 224 

Silk, raw, 370 

Silla, foundation of, 63 ; increase 
in power of, 69 ; unites with 
Pekche against Korai, 69 ; be- 
comes military power, 75 ; 
appeals to China for help, 77 ; 
answer to appeal, 78 ; invades 
Korai, 81 ; takes up arms against 
China, 84 ; defeat of, 84 ; Queen 
of, likened to Katherine of Russia, 
84 ; weakness of Government 
of, 85 ; decline of 87 ; capital 
of, attacked by Kyun Wun and 
king killed, 87 ; parallel drawn 
between royal house of, and 
last king of present-day Korea, 



398 



INDEX 



88 ; communicates with Japan, 
90 ; Prince of, marries Japanese 
lady, 91 ; king submits to Em- 
press Jingo, 92 ; sends tribute to 
Japan, 96 ; seizes treasures of 
Pekche intended for Japan, 97 ; 
defeats Japanese army, 101 

Sochon, battle of, 190 

So, prince of Tsushima, 199 

"Southerners/' 135 

Sparrowhawk, wreck of, 218 ; 
plundering of, 219 ; kind treat- 
ment of survivors of wreck of, 
219 

Stones, throwing of, in Korea, 310 

Sujin, Emperor, 90 

Sungari River, 57, 108 

Sunjo, King, 253 ; persecution of 
Christians in reign of, 253 ; 
death of, 254 

Sunto, ancient capital, 20 ; Court 
of, 114; no longer the capital, 
124 

Swi, Emperor, brings whole of 
China under his sway, 68 ; fall 
of dynasty, 74 

Taijo, Yi, king divides Korea into 
eight circuits, 17 ; acclaimed as 
king, 122 ; founder of a new 
dynasty, 123 ; establishes capital 
at Seoul, 124; changes name of 
kingdom, 125 ; abdication, 128 

Taijong invents copper types, 128, 
129 ; successors to, 129 

Tai-han, Korea named, 344 

Tai Won Kun, 214 ; forced to 
retire, 215; not unfavourably dis- 
posed to Christians, 280 ; out of 
office, 308 ; hatred of, to 
foreigners, 308 ; hatred of, to 
Queen, 308 ; deported to China, 



313 ; returns to Korea, 327 ; 
grandson imprisoned, 338 ; con- 
spiracy with Japanese, 339 

Talha, King of Silla, 345 

Tang, dynasty of, 74 ; policy of, 
74 ; close of, 85 

Tan gun, descent of, to earth, 50 

Tatong River, 14, 18 ; negotia- 
tions at, 161 ; Japanese fleet 
almost destroyed at, 170 ; 
U. S. S. Sherman lost in, 230 

Taxation, limit of, 40 ; influence on 
Korean character, 40 

Three Kingdoms, History of, 65 

Tides, violent, 13 

Tientsin, massacre of, 229 ; reason 
assigned for massacre of, 240 ; 
agreement signed at, 326 

Tigers in Korea, 15, 16 

Tobacco, use of, in Japan, 192 

Tokugawa Shoguns, 196 ; resign 
authority, 296 

Tomb, result of attempt to exca- 
vate royal, 233 

Tong Haks, society, 331 

Tongnai, fortress of, taken by 
Honishi, 153 

Tortures, description of, 270 

Trade, increase in, 328 

Treaty first with Japan, 302; British 
treaty, 315, 316 ; of Alliance be- 
tween Great Britain and Japan, 

353 

Tribute paid to China and Japan, 
296 

Troops, English and French, in 
Japan, 235 ; reason for with- 
drawal of, from Yokohama, 236 ; 
mutiny of Korean, 308 

Tsiou, work of, in Korea, 252 ; first 
Christian priest, 252 ; escapes 

• to Aichiu, 254 ; returns to Seoul, 



INDEX 



399 



254 ; martyrdom of, 255 ; death 

of, reported to China, 256. 
Tsoi, proselyte, return from Macao 

to Korea, 277 ; interprets for 

French officers, 278 
Tumen River, 11, 108 
Tung Ming, miraculous birth of, 

58 ; founder of Puyu, 58 
Tyung Chin, town of, 154 ; battle 

of, 155 

United States, naval expedition to 
Korea, 237 ; result of, 240 ; 
minister's wife received by 
Queen, 316 ; remonstrance 
against Russian oppression, 348 

Unsan, goldmine, 374 

Unyo Kwan, Japanese gunboat, 
fired on by Korean fort, 299 ; 
shells fort at Mouth of River 
Han, 300 ; landing party storms 
and takes fort, 300 

Variag, Russian cruiser, fight with 

Japanese, 21 
Vendetta, 138 
Victorieuse, French frigate, 

grounds on Korean coast, 226 ; 

rescue of crew by English ship, 

227 

Wang Kien, general of Kung I, 
85 ; greatness of, 85 
conquers provinces of Kang 
Won and Kyong Kwai, 86 ; 
proclaimed King of the North 
after Kung I, 87 ; recognised as 
king by China, 104 ; introduces 
examination of candidates for 
civil posts, 104 ; death of, 105 ; 
followers of, 105 ; end of dynasty 
of, 122 



Wang, title of, 304 

Wani, teacher of writing, arrives 
in Japan from Pekche, 97 

"Westerners/' political party, 135 ; 
subdivision of, 139 

Wetteree, John, Dutch sailor, 
prisoner in Korea for twenty- 
seven years, 220 ; fate not known, 
225 

White cock, emblem of Korea, 345 

Widows in Korea, 45 

Women, subjection, in Korea, 41, 
42 ; marriage, 42 ; seclusion, 46 ; 
education, 47 ; appearance, 48 ; 
under Mongol rule, 114 ; present 
day, 48 

Won Kiun, Admiral, 185; in- 
efficiency of, 185 ; defeat of, 186 ; 
flogged, 186 ; taken by Japanese, 
186 

Writing, introduction of, 95 

Xavier, St. Francis, 148 

Yalu River, 1 1 ; name given to, by 

Koreans, 14 ; freezing of, 27 ; 

forests in valley of, 346 
Yamato, 228 
Yamagata-Lobanoff convention, 

346 
Yang, Emperor of China, cruelty 

of, 70 ; plans invasion of Korai, 

7i 
Yang ban or nobles of Korea, 32, 
33 ; meaning of word, 32; com- 
parison of, with English nobility, 
32 ; privileges of the, 34, 36 ; 
occupations of, 35 ; compared 
with Irish landlords, 35 ; legal 
rights of, 36 ; appearance of, 36 ; 
political parties of, 37 ; tenure 
of office by, 37 ; poverty of, 38 



400 



INDEX 



Yang-Ti, Emperor of Swi dynasty, 
sends envoys to Japan, 103 ; 
encourages learning, 103 

Yin dynasty of China, fall of, 

Yi Sun, Admiral, 168 ; reconstructs 
fleet and builds ironclad, 168 ; 
deprived of his command, 185 ; 
restored to flag rank, 189 ; wins 
goodwill of Chinese admiral, 
191 ; death of, 191 

Yi Taijo, see Taijo. 

Yolsan, town of, 188 ; Japanese 
besieged at, 189 

Yong Ampho, Russian settlement 

at, 347 
Yoshitoki, lord of Tsushima. 



envoy to Korea, 143 ; negotiates 
with Ri Toku Kei, 161 

Yu, Pere Pacifique, 262 ; abuses his 
sacred office, 264 ; threat of ex- 
communication, 264 

Yuen, Li Hung Chang's deputy, 
de facto King of Korea, 327 

Yu Ku, grandson of Wiman, 53 ; 
embassy to China, 54; attacks 
Liao-Tung, 54 ; Chinese Em- 
peror sends armies against, 54 ; 
second embassy, 54 ; murder of, 
56 

Yung Jong, distinguished for re- 
forms, 209 ; prohibits intoxicat- 
ing drinks, 210 ; murders his 
son, 211 



UNW1N BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. 



1 



DEC 8 toll 



























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